Around 3.8 to four billion years ago, our first single-celled ancestors got their acts together and started doing the metabolic and reproductive watootsie that defines life. To make a very long and interesting story short, every species that has since waddled, swum or flown into existence owes its life to this very innovative group of prehistoric cells.
What's behind this ever-changing biological diversity? According to Charles Darwin and the methodical research of countless paleontologists, biologists, geneticists and other scientists'it's evolution.
But for an incredibly vocal minority, evolution does not sufficiently explain the complexity of many organisms. They point to Intelligent Design as the cause of life's biological intricacies.
As a philosophy or theological doctrine, ID might be worth discussing. As a science, it fails miserably.
Unfortunately, the Kansas Science Education Standard seems to think otherwise. Last week, it passed a six to four vote to adopt new standards in the biology curriculum, challenging Darwin's theory of evolution.
Speaking on behalf of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, John Stavers, director of the Center for Science Education at Kansas State University, said that 'the most troubling aspect of these changes is the redefinition of science,' eliminating the 'restriction of natural explanations for the natural world.'
'This restriction,' Stavers said, 'which has been one of the cornerstones of scientific practice for more than three centuries, is one of the primary reasons that science has been fruitful in producing useful knowledge.'
Darwin's theory of evolution, the most pervasive principle in biology, looked at mountains of seemingly unrelated facts to become the only cohesive explanation of the processes that transformed single celled organisms to the vast diversity of species seen today.
According to Jerry Coyne's essay 'The Case Against Intelligent Design,' 'Darwin did not propose these ideas as pure 'theory;' he also provided voluminous and convincing evidence for them ... within 15 years, nearly all biologists, previously adherents of 'natural theology,' abandoned that view and accepted Darwin's first two propositions. Broad acceptance of natural selection came much later, around 1930.'
The evidence for ID, on the other hand, is non-existent. And that's the most frustrating aspect of the ID/evolution controversy'it's not a scientific controversy at all.
'There simply isn't any ID research to publish. Its advocates bypass normal scientific due process by appealing directly to the non-scientific public...' according to an essay written by Coyne, a professor in the department of ecology and evolution at the University of Chicago, and Richard Dawkins, author of several books about evolution and an Oxford professor.
Two of ID's cornerstones'illustrating the gaps in evolutionary evidence and the reasoning that organisms are too 'irreducibly complex' to not have a designer'have been debunked by many respected scientists.
For the former, the most obvious place to look for evolutionary evidence is the fossil record. Thanks to its bottom-to-top structure, with ancient creatures like spineless fish at the bottom and mammalian remains at the top, the record shows the clear succession of forms that Darwin suggested in his theory.
At the time of Origin's printing, Darwin was concerned by the absence of transition fossils that showed the evolution of a narrow group of species from ancestors to descendants. Since then, science has turned up many fossil sequences showing evolutionary change providing fossilized evidence for the move from ape to man, dinosaur to birds and reptiles to mammals, among others.
Though fossils don't provide the cinematic, step-by-step record of evolution that some ID proponents demand, the sum-total of the scientific evidence for evolution is incredibly strong'and it will only strengthen in the coming years.
According to Coyne, the human genome is full of inactivated genes''remnants testifying to our evolutionary history''like the Vitamin C producing gene that was 'turned off' 40 million years ago in human ancestors. Its deactivation forced modern primates like us to get this vitamin elsewhere, unlike most other mammals who still have the functional version of the gene.
Shifting focus to another facet of ID, irreducible complexity suggests that complex biological mechanisms, which would fall apart if any portion were removed, must be the work of some intellect and not, according to ID proponent Michael Behe, 'produced by numerous, successive, slight modifications of prior systems.'
The ID camp asserts that evolution cannot account for intricate systems like the human eye'even Darwin had his doubts. But he proposed that if fossilized 'gradations' were found showing increasing complexity over time, evolution could account for the eye's sophisticated 'design.' Coyne wrote that scientists have since come up with a possible sequence of events for the eyeball's evolution, moving from the simple eye spots of flat worms to the 'co-opting of nearby muscles' that allowed mammals to vary their focus.
The verdict? Four billion years of evolutionary trial and error is ample time for these complex systems to arise.
The genius of any theory can be measured by its staying power. In this light, Darwin's theory of evolution is on par with Newton's theory of gravity and the belief of a heliocentric solar system, with the sun at its core. ID should be recognized for what it is'thinly veiled theology resurrecting an unnecessary ideological debate between two powerful institutions.
In response to the Kansas vote, a letter signed by a few dozen Nobel Laureates put it very eloquently: 'differences exist between scientific and spiritual world views, but there is no need to blur the distinction between the two. Nor is there need for conflict between the theory of evolution and religious faith. Science and faith are not mutually exclusive. Neither should feel threatened by the other.'
Adam Dylewski is a junior majoring in genetics. Letters? Send them to adylewski@wisc.edu
