June 2004

Cover of 'Evolution and the Myth of Creationism'

This months choice for book of the month is Tim Berra's "Evolution and the Myth of Creationism: A Basic Guide to the Facts in the Evolution Debate." Dr. Berra teaches at Ohio State University, and at this date he was a professor emeritus. He has a Ph.D. in biology.

Evolution is a subject very familiar to me; that's what piqued my interest in the sciences in the first place. While within the scientific community there is generally no debate as to whether evolution occurs or not, in the general community there certainly is. Evolution is most directly under fire from (what tends to be) religious groups that equate evolution as a secular religion. These groups very often put out incorrect information, knowingly or not. This information can in turn be very misleading, especially to someone without a particular interest or training in science. Berra has taken on the role of the guy that presents the facts so you can study them further, using this book. This is a fairly quick read (less than 200 pages long including the glossary) so it won't generally take long to read. Berra takes a rather touch and go process with most of the topics, giving you just enough information to correct the misinformation provided by other groups, but not enough to get a lot of detail. The only real flaws I see with this book is the lack of updating. My copy was printed in 1990, and in the decade+ since it was put forth, science, especially in regards to evolution, has come in leaps and bounds. This means that some of the information is out of date, possibly no longer accepted or supported. Another aspect to this book that one should keep in mind, is that this book is written as a response to creationists use (and misuse) of science, so at times it can seem somewhat bitter, and vitriolic. While I'm sure Dr. Berra intended to write this as an objective book with important information, some of it comes across as a little preachy, or a little but angry. The important part is the information the book provides, as I see it, and its the quality of the information he presents which makes this my choice for book of the month.

Berra has arranged his book into 5 sections, each dealing with a particular point of contention raised by those not accepting of evolution. His first one deals in what evolution is.

What is Evolution?

This first section basically works out as a crash course (or a refresher guide) into science and the scientific method. Berra goes over what science is, how science is done, and what science can tell us. He then goes over what makes the scientific method work, and how to use it properly. Science, in practice, can not use supernatural explanations, and this point Berra uses to show that many creationist arguments, which are usually just appeals to the supernatural, can not be science. After the jaunt into science and not science, he jumps right into what evolution entails. This is where some of the terminology comes into play, and Berra has formatted his books so that words in bold are in his glossary at the back of the book. As this is a basic guide, he doesn't get into much of the details of the history of evolution, he simply talks about what Darwin saw and wrote about. Other topics he includes in this chapter are:

Nonadaptive Evolution
Populations and Gene Flow
Reproductive Isolating Mechanisms
Catastrophes and Mass Extinctions
Embryology, Morphology, and Biogeography

Did I mention this is a basic guide? Don't go looking for a detailed description under these topics; they give a good overview, but just enough to wet the tongue.

Geologic Time and the Fossil Record

Evolution is a science that unites many different other sciences in a unique way. Not only does evolution have ties to biology, but as we will see in this chapter, we can learn about evolution from geology as well. What would geology have to do with evolution, you might be wondering. Well, for starters there are fossils. Fossils are the remains of once living organisms. Sometimes it comes in the form of bones, but other times it can be stuff that's not actually living, but an indicator of life itself, such as footprints or fossil dung (coprolites). Also, putting together a geologic column (an ordering of rocks from oldest to youngest based on such things as the Principle of Superposition) can give us an idea of what living things were living at a given time in the past. We don'/t have time machines, so this is really the next best thing. Keeping in mind this geologic column, and the fossils we can find within the different layers, a general idea of the history of life unfolds. There is a distinct pattern to life over time, and that is of an increasing variety of complexity. At the earliest (and oldest) rocks, there are only microfossils, such things as fossil traces of bacteria. These remain in the rock record for billions of years, and only relatively recently did humans come about. Naturally, the question arises, 'How do we know the rocks are that old?' In the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries, radioactivity was discovered and studied. One thing they were finding out was that radioactivity is both predictable and measurable, and after even more study, they found what they called the half-life of many radioactive materials. A half-life is a measure of how long it takes (on average) for a given amount of radioactive material is decayed to the point that only half of it remains. Now, if you can find these radioactive elements in rocks, you can use this information to tell you about how old the rocks are. Pretty simple and straight forward idea. Berra continues this chapter with a few more concepts, which are:

Reading Rocks and the Fossils
Transitional Fossils
Punctuated Equilibrium

This isn't an exhaustive list, bet he has some good information here.

The Explanatory Power of Evolution

What good is an idea of science if it doesn't explain anything? Does evolution actually do anything for our understanding of life? Well this is a book about the facts of evolution, and one of the facts of evolution is that life changes over time. How life changes over time is explained by the theory, and probably one of the most applicable situations where evolution is valuable comes from drug-resistant bacteria. One of the greatest discoveries of the early 20^th Century is antibiotics. Since they were first discovered, they've saved countless lives. They work essentially by poisoning harmful bacteria in our bodies. When a doctor gives you a prescription, you will usually hear them tell you to "take all of these antibiotics, even if you aren't feeling sick any more." If you've ever wondered why, it's because of evolution. Any healthy population will have some variation within it. In populations of bacteria, said variation could come in the form of resistance to a particular medicine. Antibiotics are pretty brutal in how they work, and the premise behind taking them as your doctor prescribes is that so you kill off everything fast so they don't get a chance to recover. If you choose not to heed your doctors advice, you could allow one of the drug-resistant bacteria to live, which can then share its resistance with other bacteria. Given enough time, you've helped create a new strain of bacteria in which the antibiotics are no longer effective on. This process is best explained by evolution. Other topics he includes in this section are:

Rabbits and Myxomatosis
The Peppered Moth and Industrial Melanism
Sickle Cell Anemia and Malaria
Convergent Evolution
Stepwise Adaptation

The Evolution of Life and the Rise of Humans

This is one of the longer chapters in this book, and understandably so. He touches on subjects (and by touch I mean he includes about a paragraph or so) from all the significant events in our history from the Big Bang to the rise of our species Homo sapiens, a span of about 15 billion years, or so. One point I would like to interject is that evolution deals with the changes in life over time, not the beginning of the universe or the origin of life. I think Berra included brief mention of those here though, because many creationists try to incorporate both the Big Bang and the origin of life as evolution. The majority of this chapter is spent on the finer points of human evolution, but he puts that at the end of the chapter (as well he should) and after talking about the origin of life, discusses briefly of how life led from simple forms of life to mammals. He includes lots of graphics for this section in particular, and mentions everything from anatomical support to (then) recent findings about how closely related we are to other primates by genetics. Of all the parts of the book, this is probably the most important, in my opinion, and could be read more than once. Berra has a lot of information about humans, and he condenses it all; you might need to read this more than once just to keep things straight.

Science, Religion, Politics, Law, and Education

This section is more of a statement of how things are in our country regarding the evolution/creationism "debate" than it is about science. Up to this point, Berra has presented what he feels should at least be a basic argument in favor of evolution, and he's done a pretty good job of it. Unfortunately, this isn't really a discussion of whether evolution is valid as much as it is a politically heated discussion. He starts this section off discussing the state of science education in our country and how that impacts the debate. He pretty much reaches the conclusion that science in our schools is faltering, and I am inclined to agree with him.Some of this stems from how we teach our children, and other parts come from what kind of teachers we accept as teachers.

Another issue that creationists will try to push is that evolution is somehow anti-God in some form or fashion. Of course, this is absurd, because there are many groups that accept evolution and believe in God. Not to mention how much evolution even hardcore creationists will accept. In general, most creationists will accept that change happens within "kinds" (which is probably best explained as variation within a species as kind is never really defined). Since evolution is simply change over time, this so-called "change within kinds" falls within evolution, but it'll never be called evolution by someone who truly believes. Another tactic creationists use is the number of so-called scientists that accept creation over evolution. This misleading tidbit seems like its a valid argument, but science doesn't work by popular vote. This is also misleading because many of the scientists they say support creation are typically not biologists, but engineers, or computer technicians, people who work with design and tend to be biased in favor of design in the first place. These people go into these fields (as I see it anyhow) because they expect to see design, since all things are designed by God, and these fields cater to that want. Berra discusses a few other topics in this last chapter, such as:

Some Creationist Claims

Evolution violates the second law of thermodynamics.

The small amount of helium in the atmosphere proves that the Earth is young.

The rate of decay of the Earth's magnetic field leads to the calculation that the Earth was created about 10,000 years ago.

If evolution were true, there would have to be transitional fossils, but there are none; therefore evolution did not occur.

Fossils seem to appear out of nowhere at the base of the Cambrian; therefore they had to have been created

All fossils were deposited at the time of the Noachian flood.

There are places where advanced fossils lie beneath more primitive fossils.

The chances of the proper molecules randomly assembling into a living cell are impossibly small.

Dinosaur and human footprints have been found together in Cretaceous limestone at Glen Rose, Texas.

Biologists have never seen a species evolve.

Evolution, too, is a religion, and requires faith.

The number of humans today would be much greater if we have been around as long as evolutionists say we have.

The Scopes Monkey Trial

The Arkansas Balanced Treatment Act

The Louisiana Creationism Act

The Inevitable Triumph of Knowledge

These are the last of the chapters, but Berra has includes a few appendices to explain some topics, like genetics, a chronology of Darwin's life, and a glossary.

Summary

This book is a good tool in the discussion of evolution and creationism, but it does have its faults. First, and I think I mentioned this before, is that it is out of date. Updating this book can make this just that much more effective. While creationist arguments don't really seem to change, they do what they can to make old material look new by constantly repackaging it, or sometimes by adding what recent "finds" they can to support their position. Another downfall of this book is that, while the information is good, the only likely people to but this book are people that already support evolution, and are looking for a quick read to bolster what they already understand. There are lots of book about evolution, and a large portion of what you can read about here can be found for free online (such as at websites like TalkOrigins.org). There isn't much for an evolutionist to learn from this book, as he only touches on most subjects without really developing them, but nonetheless, this would be a decent book to have, and maybe read every once in a while.