A conversation about evolution with Dr. Benoit Leblanc

After I wrote an open letter to Dr. Jerry Coyne, Dr. Benoit Leblanc was kind enough to comment at length in response.

He wrote,

Dear Mr. Leonard,

I hope you won’t take umbrage at my attempt to answer your questions, even though I am not in the same league as Dr. Coyne. I am however a biologist, and having taught for the past ten years the molecular mechanisms that make evolution possible, I may be able to shed some light on a few points.

Let me start by saying that your curiosity does you credit, and even though I understand that you come at this with a creationist/IDer mindset, I laud you for at least askng questions.

I also hope that I won’t come across as pedantic, but I must admit something: very often, people with limited training in biology will be puzzled by things that are so basic to those trained in the art that these may adopt a condescending tone when answering questions. I hope that won’t be the case here. There is an anecdote I’d like to tell: many years ago, my wife and I had dinner with our landlord, a kindly mathematician from Heidelberg university. Making conversation, I asked what he was working on I knew that it had to do with some kind of high-level arithmetics, but being a biologist and not a true math-head I was quite the novice in that field. He took a second to think about it, then smiled charitably and said, apologetically, almost, “… you would not understand”. Which, of course, was true. It’s not that, seeing me as untrained, he thought I was stupid or ignorant but knew that I lacked the information and the experience required to understand what he was working on. Of course, biology is, by and large, easier to relate to than mathematics… but personally, I find it strange (though not totally unexpected, since the matter of where we came from is interesting to everyone) that people who would never argue with their mechanic about what’s wrong with their car would find it perfectly sensible to tell a trained biologist that he doesn’t know what he’s talking about.

But let’s go back to your questions.

The first one you have is “can organisms shape-shift, simply by means of DNA recombination achieved through sexual reproduction?”

The answer is yes, of course, and this is true even without sexual reproduction. Shape-shifting is in fact a very simple trick to perform, and a speciation event is far more ground-shaking than simply modifying the shape of a creature. For example, among those we have studied over the past thirty years are the many genes involved in establishing body plans and organ and limb development. These genes are the ones that dictate at what time during development and in which part of the body this or that protein will be synthesized, and in which quantity. One of the most fascinating aspect of developmental biology is that most organisms share a very large part of these genes (and the closer two species are, the more alike these genes are too). What may change is that due to a small mutation in this regulatory sequence or to a small deletion in that one, the level of expression of one or more of these genes may vary between a human being and, say, a chimpanzee.

For example, there is a particular gene called MYH16 which codes for a type of myosin, a protein found in muscles. This gene is shared by all primates and has a crucial role in the development of a powerful temporal muscle, allowing most primates to have very strong jaws. In humans, the gene is there too, and its promoter is perfectly functional… meaning that our body tries to make the protein. But sometimes in our fairly recent past, an ancestor of modern humans suffered a mutation in that gene; two DNA bases were lost, which resulted in a truncated protein being synthesized. This truncated protein is non-functional, and the result is that our temporal muscle is small and weak. The good thing (in hindsight) is that what we lost in cheweing power we may have gained in another way. First, the mutation was not that harmful, since it occured (and was allowed to spread) roughly at the time our ancestors discovered the use of fire, and our diet changed in such a way that strong jaw muscles were no longer such an important factor in our survival. Second, the lack of a strong jaw made it less important to preserve a thick, small and strong skull for it to act as an anchor point; this allowed further genetic changes (and these have been and are still investigated, to much enthusiasm) that made the human skull bigger, allowing further development of the brain. That brain itself, by the way, is not the result of hundreds or thousands of near-impossible happy accidents; it mostly cames from simple mutations that allowed neuronal precursors to divide a few more times in the human cortex than they do in less brainy mammals. And so from the simple loss of two base pairs, a chain of events was made possible that made it possible for us to get our modern brain (which is, in itself, such a benefit to our reproductive success that it was of course preserved).

Other examples of simple mutations that lead to massive changes in body plans abound, and I’d be remiss if I failed to recommend the works of Dr. Sean Carroll, a specialist of the link between development and evolution (a discipline referred to as evo-devo in biology circles). His books “From DNA to diversity” is quite informative. Apart from the odd mutations in developmental genes of the Hox family that will lead to flies having legs on the head or an extra pair of wings (certainly a massive shape-shifting event, and one occuring in one generation), we have things like a slight delay in expression of such genes in the development of vertebrate embryos, leading to chickens having fewer neck vertebrae than geese, or like snakes (which should have legs, really) failing to develop them because limb buds fail to develop on account of certain molecular signals that are lacking. (Some throwbacks in the python family manage to grow small limbs, though, because not all mutations have an all-or-nothing effect on the phenotype and that some may be partly rescued by the effect of other genes; furthermore, it shows that snake ancestors had legs and that the genetic machinery to grow them is still partly present).

Shape-shifting is also illustrated by the amazing different forms than the plant Brassica olearacea can adopt; by carefully isolating certain individuals and allowing them to breed only among themselves, you’ll get things as different as cauliflower, cabbage, Brussels sprouts or broccoli. And that’s without even having to go through a speciation event! Now you made mention of varied forms developing within a species, so the above probably didn’t come as a surprise; I suppose a more drastic change, especially one occuring in a short time, would be seen as more convincing. I can understand why it would be great to be able to breed fish in a classroom and have them turn into ostriches in one generation, and say “see kids? That’s how new species appear”. But that’s not how species appear, that’s not how Darwin thought species appear, and that’s not how any biologist believe species appear. Although it is possible to bring about a radical change in an organism with just one mutation, it won’t turn the affected individual into a member of a new species. It would simply be a mutant. For speciation to occur, sufficient modifications must accumulate to make the “new model” incapable of breeding with the old one, and I would expect that events occur in the reverse order: first there is reproductive isolation, and only later will changes accumulate. But these changes do accumulate. The flipper of the whale, for example, has the same bones as do the legs of a land mammal; and going back through the fossil record, we find a succession of increasingly less whale-like ancestors who have more and more leg-like appendages. All due to the expression of the same lot of genes, but at slightly different times. (And yes, we can play with this process in the laboratory, although in a ham-fisted and clumsy way. Not because it’s fun to grow six-legged amphibians, but because if we can learn to control limb growth and formation we have a hope of regrowing amputated human limbs the same way we can now regrow amputated frog limbs; certainly a worthy goal).

But back to your questions.

“My first question: How does the theory of speciation actually work in real life?”

The flippant answer would be “quite well, thank you”, but i get your meaning. And your basic understanding of the process is sound: groups reproductively isolated from similar groups will eventually grow apart, genetically speaking, due to genetic drift, the accumulation of different mutations, and very likely different selection pressures. We could also add hybridization and polyploidy to the mix, since they are fairly frequent in plants. (Triticale, for example, is a cross between wheat and rye. It resembles both of its parent species but is now its own plant).

A famous paper in the journal Science (“Hybrid speciation in experimental populations of yeast”) showed that crossing two yeast species, although not a very successful process because most of the offspring end up infertile, could give rise to a a few individuals of a new breed that would be fertile with itself but not either of the parent species (the very high number of yeast cells in a culture makes the experiment more feasible than if we used, say, elephants). Now I agree that it’s not as spectacular as would be the crossing of a crocodile with a duck producing a fertile dragon, but it allows us to observe real speciation in action. The lack of photogenic results does not make such experiments less spectacular.

The common ancestry of certain structures, already obvious to the physiologist, was enriched by the analysis of gene expression in (for example) certain limbs. We can see how a differently-shaped arm or hand can become a wing in bats, a different type of wing in birds, a flipper in dolphins or a leg and hoof in horses. More spectacular, we also have a fairly good idea of how a certain structure helping arthropods to exchange gas with their environment (“breathing”, to make it short) likely became a little sturdier, a little thinner, and ended up as the insect wing.

You say “quite frankly, the idea that sexual reproduction involving two members of the same species could produce a different species seems to violate our known “laws” of biology. Humans produce baby humans, apes produce baby apes, and so forth.”

Yes, that is a common observation. But then, the idea is not a speciation event occurs when two parents from species A suddenly beget a new member of species B. A species doesn’t “appear”, biologically speaking (although we use the term in the fossil record, for if a species takes a mere million year to develop, it might just have “appeared” as far as geological time is concerned). Species develop and end up different from a parent species the same way a sentence changes little by little in the game of telephone and ends up sounding very different. We’re talking incremental, often unnoticeable change. No two dinosaurs ever saw a chicken burst forth from their egg (and a good thing too, as they probably would have just eaten it) but progressive generations of dinosaurs who looked imperceptively less and less dinosaur-like and more and more bird-like gave birth to little critters that looked very much like them; only when comparing the great-great-great-(…)-great-grandparents to their great-great-great-(…)-great-grandkids could we say that a definite change took place. And since evolution usually occurs over spans of millions of years, there is a lot of time for these events to take place. (Although they don’t *have* to. Some shapes, probably quite well adapted to an environment that is pretty stable, do not change much over time -although unseen details like internal biochemistry or a taste for vanilla- may change a lot. Crocodiles, turtles, sharks, coealacanths, look a lot like their distant ancestors did; whales do not. Trilobites were also around for a very long while, and while they are emphatically not as homogeneous as some might think, they had a pretty stable basic Bauplan).

Now I realize that I’m mostly talking about how current biology explains how the world’s living things came to look like they do, but this might just be a just-so story unless we can make predictions. So let’s do just that. Let’s consider the human genome. It is riddled with the remains of retroviruses, small genetic parasites that enter our cells and manage to have their own tiny genome integrated into our chromosomes. And once they’re in, they stay there. So if, say, my grandfather was once infected by a retrovirus that saw its genome inserted in position #123 of chromosome 1, and that grandad passed that particular chromosome 1 to my mother, and that she in turn gave it to me, I will cary a copy of the retrovirus at that exact spot. It will become a “marker” of my grandad’s chromosome 1, bequeathed to the generations that follow him. Now if I am in turn infected by such a retrovirus, and that it integrates at position #456 of chromosome 1, the chromosome 1 I give to my kids (if they inherit that particular one and not my other chromosome 1) will carry two markers: one at position #123, and one at position #456. A few generations down the line, people looking at their chromosomes will be able to draw these conclusions: those with the marker at position #123 but not at position #456 will very likely be descendents of my grandfather, but won’t be my own descendents; those with the markers at #123 and #456 will likely be not only descended from my grandad, but from me as well.

Since these integration events are spurious, they are a good “neutral” way to link some families to others. And the interesting thing here is that if we look at many, many human lineages, we find that the more distantly related peope are, the fewer markers they have in the same positions (and we’re talking about hundreds of thousands of positions, here, and many millions if we account for transposons, which are not viruses but do pretty much the same thing). You can see where I’m headed, I’m sure: if we extend our sampling to closely-related but non-human species, like the bonobo or the chimpanzee, the family tree-like distribution continues: apes do have tons of ancient retroviruses inserted right where humans have them too. And if we go higher, we continue to see a steadily declining co-localization, strongly suggesting that as species diverged from each other, they left with common patterns of retroviral distributions that they later added to on their own. It is far more parcimonious to conclude that the co-localisation that closely parallels the accepted tree of life hints at infections that occured long ago and were maintained in daughter species than to come up with a way viruses would go around and independently infect species, integrating their genome in exactly the same spots every time.

On to your second question to Dr. Coyne.

“My second question: how do you reconcile the long periods of stasis indicated by the fossil record with the Darwinian idea of slow and gradual change?”

Okay, first, let me something that would be heretical if there was really such a thing as a “Darwin religion”. Charles Darwin did not know everything. Charles Darwin is not the be-all and end-all of evolutionary theory. “On the origin of species…” was a door-opener, the same way Columbus opened a whole new era of exploration for European -even if he mistakenly thought he had reached India. Charles Darwin came up with an amazingly simple, amazingly logical, and incredibly powerful way to explain the very real fact that species appear and vanish, and that lifeforms change over time. But he had no access to genetics (it didn’t exist in his days), had no idea what a chromosome was, was not even aware that there was such a thing as DNA, and did not know that mutants could spontaneously appear. His idea of a long, very gradual change made a lot of sense -but it’s not the end of the story. And in fact, even with that taken into account, natural selection would predict that if the environment doesn’t change, there is little reason for a species to do so.

We now know that this is of course an over-simplification. But the Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium concept, which is to population genetics a rough equivalent of what the Ideal Gas Law is to gases, does say that in a very large population where everybody breeds equally and each allele is tramsitted independently, and where mutations do not occur, and which is not affected by sudden environmental pressures, all the alleles of the population should stabilize their frequency within one generation. In layman’s terms, it means “evolution stops”. So long periods of statis are not particularly surprising: they are predicted by biology’s own laws.

That being said, and with all due respect to Stephen J. Gould and Niles Eldredge, I am not personally a fan of the punctuated equilibrium theory. That stasis can exists for very long periods, yes, that is expected and observed. That it is the rule and that gradual change is the exception, I have a problem with; the evidence is not all that convincing, particularly since we have several examples of continuous changes in the fossil record. Another great biologist, Ernst Mayr, was quite hostile to the concept; but whether one camp or the other is right, or whether both are only partially right, none of them argues against the reality of evolution.

You say “if I understand you correctly, isolation or geography plays a crucial role in speciation.”

That is quite accurate, but we’re talking about reproductive isolation, here, which may be facilitated by, but does not require, physical isolation. We know that humans with a look so different that they were at one time considered a different species (the Neanderthals) probably did not breed frequently with “modern” Homo sapiens; very recent papers even suggest that such attempts were rarely sucessful. However, we have discovered in the last few years that a low percentage of genes in a typical European genome comes from Neanderthals. That’s an exciting discovery, showing that a group that was probably on its way to become its own species was partly “reabsorbed” into the main branch of the family, while the shoot died out. The same happened to a group we know only by its genes, the Denisovans.

As for how isolation occurs in the ocean, another of your interrogations, it occurs the same way it does on land… but probably in an even more pronounced way, because distances are so much greater. Not all marine species migrate all over, and those that do usually do so at specific times of the year and along specific routes. The same holds true for birds who, like fish, could potentially have the capacity to spread evenly all over the globe but do not.

The isolation aspect also makes it very easy to understand why there were no placental mammals in Australia. The continent was isolated before they appeared, carrying only prototherian and metatherian animals with it.

Your third question to Dr. Coyne is as follows: “In your lecture at Harvard, you offered examples of the vas deferens tube location in humans and allegedly vestigial organs as examples of poor “design” by nature. You were using comparative anatomy to form your professional opinion. Yet when someone such as myself suggest that sophisticated innate abilities such as echo-location navigation, observed in both bats and dolphins, offers us an excellent example of brilliantly intelligent design, again using comparative anatomy, the suggestion is met with scorn and ridicule. Why is comparative anatomy useful for you to interpret as evidence of unintelligent design, while more obvious examples of intelligent design are declared a beguiling illusion? Could it be due to your personal bias toward atheism?”

I can’t speak for Dr. Coyne, but in my opinion he’s mostly saying that the idea of a designer idea is less compatible with obvious flaws than is that of natural selection. Biologists love the living world. Biologists are awed by the living world. Biologists take a never-ending pleasure in seeing how well-adapted most species are to their environment. But that some biological systems work so well (even if one skips over the fact that some don’t) is in no way a proof of design. And I really, really don’t know how comparative anatomy is supposed to help the designer argument; if anything, it would seem to do the opposite. Take the dolphin, for example, and its echolocation capacities. These capacities are shared by many cetaceans, as would be expected from common descent and similar ways of life. In some species they are very efficient, in others less so; in all cases, they do seem to provide an advantage. These echolocation skills are not shared with sharks, though. Furthermore, they seem to make dolphins susceptible to certain perturbations that send them beaching themselves; certainly an omnipotent designer would have made a better sonar, or one that doesn’t go on the fritz? Let’s consider two possible sources for the appearance of design: either the refinement of a form or function that increase a creature’s chance to pass its genes to further generations, which is what biologists think is jhappening, or outright design. The first view is very tolerant of less than perfect systems, even if with time we expect that they should have the chance to get better an better at what they do; the second view logically demands immediate perfection (at least if the designer is all-powerful and all-knowing). Meanwhile, we have human eyes that do a bang-up jobs at allowing us to see, but that have photoreceptors pointing the wrong way, that are prone to presbytia, glaucoma, detached retina and cataracts… A successful enough “design”, but not one that couldn’t be made better. And of course, there is the matter of knowing all the possible intermediates between a single-cell photoreceptor and a fully working camera-like eye. The “small improvements” idea is just simpler, because even if it requires more knowledge to be reached, it doesn’t present a logical dilemma.

Your fourth question is the least contentious one, because it deals with matters that lie outside of evolutionary biology. “Until life exists, how can it evolve?”

The answer is, of course, “it can’t”. Evolutionary theory is not concerned with abiogenesis, although its principles do apply to the evolution of increasingly-efficient unliving replicators (such as self-replicating nucleic acids) that may, in time, acquire characteristics that we associate with living creatures. Such is the power of the natural selection concept: in a population of replicators that can accumulate mutations, the replicators that gain a replicative advantage will, by definition, replicate better.

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I’m not convinced that the theory of evolution is the supreme achievement of human intellect, personally, although I understand the enthusiasm shown here. I’m pretty sure that general relativity is even more impressive, although I don’t truly understand it for lack of sufficient mathematical skills. I do believe the theory of evolution trumps flight, space travel, the wheel and the computer, though, because these remarkable technological achievements do not really change the way we think about ourselves or our place in the universe. (Calculus, the periodic table, the heliocentric theory or the big bang theory would be in the same league as natural selection, though, as far as I’m concerned. They redefine reality).

Life can’t evolve until it exists. That is true. But that’s like saying a cake can’t exist until it is baked. We do know that life evolves, and going backward in time we see how today’s organisms descended from previous life forms, all the way to an era with no plants, no animals, no eukaryote, even, and at some point very likely no bacteria. What came before? Although these Ur-ancestors left no fossils, we can make educated guesses. The discovery of self-replicating molecules is not a proof, but offers a possible explanation. The sad thing is that we may never be totally sure, despite a lot of plausible hypotheses; there might be things that are so far removed from us in terms of time and space that the best we can hope for is a credible conjecture buttressed by many facts. But definite certitude? That may not be always attainable. And I’m fine with that. It leaves the door open to new knowledge that may come up eventually. Drawing a line somewhere on the map of our knowledge and writing, instead of “terra incognita”, something like “from here on, it’s magic”, does not strike me as scientific, nor very sensible.

“So, in light of what we know, how can you say that speciation is a fact, when in reality it doesn’t seem to be a particularly good theory?”

Well, because in light of what we do know (and not what you appear to think we know), speciation is a fact, and the evolution of species by means of natural selection is a ridiculously good theory. I’m sorry to say it so bluntly, but that’s the way it is. It is such a good theory, in fact, that all of modern biology stands on it.

I hope this will have proven useful, and thank you for maintaining an inquisitive attitude.

Thank you, Dr. Leblanc for taking the time to write your thought-provoking response.

It seems that in your opinion, I failed to show proper deference to Dr. Coyne. I’m truly sorry if I gave you that impression. Perhaps the strong sentiments of derision and ridicule Dr. Coyne has expressed against religious beliefs likewise tainted my confidence in his ability to produce unbiased science.

The truth is that I do respect the work of scientists. I also respect medical doctors.

However, an advanced degree does not make one infallible.  Doctors and scientists are human beings just like me, and similarly capable of mistakes.

True stories: Twice in my life, I’ve received horribly inaccurate medical diagnoses. Once I had one doctor mistakenly claim that a relatively simple eye infection was caused by flesh-eating bacteria.

Another doctor once told me that he thought I might have leukemia.

Thank God, both were wrong. Nobody’s perfect, believe me. I quickly learned to trust, but also verify.

Forgive me if I’m wrong, but it seems that you agree my understanding of the science behind evolution theory was accurate on the major points of contention.

I’m supposed to simply trust the pontifications of Dr. Coyne, because you say he’s right. You also said that biology is not concerned with the hypothesis called abiogenesis.

In respectful disagreement, I wrote a separate blog piece explaining specifically why abiogenesis is important in the Big Picture.

Your protest to the contrary has been duly noted. But using your same cake analogy to illustrate my objections, the problem with accepting speciation on face value is that it is like saying a cake can exist without worrying about where you’ll find the eggs, milk, sugar, flour, cake pan, and the oven.

I prefer not to make bold assumptions that the necessary ingredients will magically appear on cue without the benefit of solid evidence to support such conjecture.

Dr. Leblanc, you’ve made it clear that the consensus of biologists has accepted speciation as fact. However, that seems to be nothing more than an appeal to authority.

With all due respect, so what? Consensus is not science.

Ironically, you seem to reject the consensus of paleontologists when it comes to the evidence used to support punctuated equilibrium theory. So, am I left to assume that consensus is only acceptable until it disagrees with your perspective?

You wrote that I was correct in my basic understanding of evolution theory, but insinuated that I’m completely wrong in the conclusions I have drawn. Presumably I am to defer to indoctrination by the “experts.”

I’ve already replied in another post introducing the Big Picture to your remarks about my fourth point, that life cannot evolve until it exists. There’s no need to belabor the issue since you’ve conceded that very important point.

Surprisingly, you seemed to take offense at the idea that I would ask a trained and presumably expert biologist specific questions about biology, his alleged field of expertise.

Should I be asking questions about space travel instead?

You wrote “evolution of species by means of natural selection is a ridiculously good theory” but frankly, offered no new evidence that Dr. Coyne failed to mention in Why Evolution is True.

Unfortunately, my understanding of speciation theory did not improve. Because you conceded that the parts of speciation theory I recounted from my understanding were accurate, I feel confident that if someone were to supply the missing information, I would be able to comprehend it.

When I specifically asked for the missing ingredient in speciation that allows a single, rat-like ancestor to morph into every known species of mammal within the last 200 million years, you gave me yeast and MYH16. No offense, Dr. Leblanc, but that doesn’t begin to answer my question.

With all due respect, I’m not demanding that you explain the speciation that allowed a turnip and a turtle to share common ancestry. I’d be perfectly happy if you could explain why lions and zebras split from a common ancestor. Both animals are mammals if I’m not mistaken, so both animals must have differentiated from the same rat. less than 200 million years ago, if evolution is true.

One to hunt, and the other to potentially become dinner. And, we still have mice, rats, elephants, dolphins, whales, dogs, cats, leopards, giraffes all related to that same mammalian LUCA.

In short, Dr. Leblanc, why does the food chain exist? That seems to be the real mystery behind speciation. Which came first, the cotton rat or the cotton plant?

Nevertheless, let’s concentrate on the first three issues that specifically involve evolution.

You began your letter to me by asserting that I approach the existential questions with a creationist/ID mindset. No problem.

It would be somewhat dishonest for me to suggest otherwise. After all, for two years I wrote online as the Atlanta Creationism Examiner. As long as we acknowledge that “your” argument, or the one of Coyne and Dawkins, is motivated by an atheist/pure materialism philosophy, I think that’s fair.

But please, don’t claim what Coyne or Dawkins preach is pure and untainted science. These men are both hardcore atheists, first and foremost. At the end of his Harvard lecture, Dr. Coyne openly admitted his beliefs have been shaped by his Marxist/socialist/atheist philosophy.

In his convoluted, pure materialist view of the world, Jerry Coyne would have you believe there is no such thing as moral responsibility. Because morality can only come from God, Dr. Coyne simply rejects the possibility and any evidence that might contradict his world view without giving the evidence any consideration.

There is where we differ.

You appear to have gotten the impression that I “counterattacked” Dr. Coyne because of my own animus about his views on religion. Let me reassure you; I asked my questions because I sincerely want to know if there was a real answer.

I could believe in theistic evolution, if only it were true. It would be much easier than inventing a new theory to fit all of the scientific evidence.

I’m diligently looking for that biological example like Kate the fertile mule for clear evidence of theistic speciation that gives some insight into how the phenomena is possible. I’m specifically seeking evidence that might refute my philosophy I’ve been calling iterative creation.

Biologists say transitional species; I say prototypes. And I’d be more than happy to justify that claim.

Now, since you mentioned the work of Sean Carroll, I’d be remiss if I didn’t point out that my experience has been to read about his work in theoretical physics. I am somewhat familiar with his “Arrow of Time” hypothesis about the multiverse and even find parts of it useful.

However, in a panel discussion on atheism, Dr. Carroll somewhat brazenly made the assertion that he knew what happened when we die.

Keep in mind, in this same conversation, Dr. Carroll said that we have to distinguish between proof and warranted belief. He also said that he was as certain that God did not exist as he was the sun would rise in the east the following day. He said a number of things on which we agreed, and then made statements I was absolutely sure he was wrong to make.

So, I wrote Dr. Carroll an email, asking him to explain what he thinks will happen when he dies since he claimed to know. When I asked if he was familiar with scientific evidence of corroborated veridical NDE perceptions, to my disappointment but no great surprise, Dr. Carroll boldly stated that he had no need to investigate claims that violated the laws of physics.

However, we are asked to blindly accept speciation theory as a fact, when in reality it violates the known “laws” of modern biology.We are expected to blindly assume that this universe arose from literally nothing, that dirt and chemicals became a living organism, because someone else said so. There is no “one size fits all” solution to life.

Unfortunately, polyploidy only seem to occur in limited species: namely plants, fish, and some amphibians. You seem willing enough to discuss the negative evidence used to attack belief in God but refuse to consider the positive evidence I can offer to support my counterargument.

When I ask you to consider the implications of what you blindly believe due to a consensus of your peers, you declared that physics and chemistry is not your concern, yet you rely on them to produce the biology you study.

With all due respect, in order to make any audacious claims about the nonexistence of God, you have to concern yourself with the Big Picture. You have to allow yourself to at least consider the possibility that God does exist.

My argument has never been that speciation is flat-out impossible. Virtually any idea you can have is theoretically possible. My counterargument is concerned with not the impossible, but which is more probable? I’ve got great evidence, but no one seems to care.

Admittedly your “croco-duck” would satisfy the issues that prevent my blind acceptance of speciation theory, but there’s no need to produce anything so dramatic. I’d settle for proper identification and explanation of the biological processes that allow dogs to split from wolves, or even how houseflies and horseflies share common ancestry.

Nothing fancy.

But sadly, you give me multiple species of yeast.

The splitting event of speciation itself remains a nothing but a glossed over detail. This creates the distinct impression in my mind that you believe something has happened without the faintest idea of how it might have worked. My point is simple; perhaps it is too simple.

If the mule, liger, zedonk, or wholphin weren’t biological dead-ends, speciation theory might actually be believable. From what you’re telling me, the ability to observe the type of speciation I need to see to accept that it happens without divine intervention simply isn’t possible in the time frames we have available.

Implying that “evolution deniers” are too stupid to understand how evolution works and the argument from majority opinion might cow some opposition into silence, but I am stubborn enough to resist any argument based purely on superior intellect–especially until it’s been proved.

Bluster and bravado aren’t enough to convince me. I need provable facts.

Author Sam Harris recently wrote a book insisting that free will is nothing but an illusion, echoing many of the absurd, unsubstantiated claims made by academia regarding neuroscience. In light of the clear, incontrovertible evidence of brain-free consciousness, his argument becomes utter nonsense.

Therefore, Harris insists that corroborated veridical NDE perceptions are actually hallucinations. When exactly did hallucinations become confused with accurate memories? The only way to justify such an egregious mistake is to refuse to investigate the claim.

Yet I am the one called a denier of truth. Quid est veritas?

You ask why I feel brazen enough to challenge Dr. Coyne in his specific field of expertise. I must admit, I refuse to genuflect before any other human being.

While I do respect the fact Dr. Coyne has earned a doctorate and written a best-selling book that claims to explain why evolution is true, I also recognize the fact he isn’t immune to making extraordinarily claims about religion in particular. If his bias can lead to clear mistakes in his understanding of religion, why not evolution?

Having read his book and watched several of his lectures, it seemed rather obvious that Dr. Coyne simply glossed over the most important details regarding speciation–for example, how did phyla come into existence? Why is there a food chain? How did complex systems like the central nervous system and respiratory system evolve from simpler organisms with different body plans, and why?

I’m not afraid to consider the possibility you could be correct about speciation theory, which is why I asked questions and read books purportedly describing the processes called evolution.

What I don’t understand is why you and others in the scientific community appear to be afraid of considering the possibility that intermediate species were created prototypes rather than beneficial but accidental mutations?

In your comment, you mentioned the possibility that humans descended from Neanderthals. Been there, done that.

If this shape-shifting you have suggested actually does occur, then man is not only related to the chimpanzee and the bonobo ape, but also to the banana we both like to eat. This common ancestry was solely performed through the biological process of sexual reproduction, simply when given enough time.

Assuming for a moment this degree of shape-shifting you take for granted is theoretically possible, the questions how? and why? immediately come to mind. This is usually when the “environmental niche” card gets played.

At this point in the conversation, I’m always reminded of a Monty Python skit about Harold the flying sheep. The interesting thing is, sheep do not so much fly as plummet.

In my simplistic, non-biologist way of thinking, speciation is only possible one of two ways. Either two members of the same species mate, or two members of different species mate. The offspring must be fertile and reproduce. There doesn’t seem to be a third option.

You and I seem to agree that the only way speciation can occur is if an isolated breeding population of an existing species either splits off or morphs into a different species.

In my book I made it clear that it doesn’t matter if you blindly want to believe Darwin’s theory. If you seek answers to existential questions, you soon realize that the question of how modern species came to exist only provides a piece of a puzzle, not the whole Big Picture.

If you can’t ever reach the point where life diversifies without invoking a God to create the universe or animate matter, speciation becomes a mere detail of how things may or may not have been implemented.

True, scientific tests tell us that the earth is several billion years old, and the universe much older. However, the fossil record also tells us that life hasn’t been around in abundance for billions of years, and multiple mass extinctions cut down on the amount of time new species emerge.

While time does solve some evolutionary problems, it creates the problem of the coelacanth. The exact same process that theoretically describes the rapid (in geologic terms) emergence of new species as well as stasis. The “rules” for rates of evolutionary change appear to be quite similar to the rules suggested by Butch Cassidy in a knife fight.

Evolution can’t predict that everything will happen. Well, if it does, then the theory becomes useless. Anything goes.

I can understand how Jack Horner can look at a chicken and think he sees a modern relative of Archeopteryx. I just don’t understand how he could claim to know for a fact that chickens evolved from dinosaurs.

If the processes of evolution are not directed, then basic statistical analysis dictates that a normal distribution of mutations would occur. Some would be beneficial, some deleterious, and some neutral.

That factor alone makes Darwin’s assumption of slow, gradual, almost relentless change most attractive.

However, the fossil record, with clear evidence of mass extinctions and numerous examples of stasis, makes punctuated  equilibrium theory appear far more attractive. Gould wanted to have it both ways, to be sure.

There seems to be a lot of “because of it can” sort of answers necessary to accept evolution as fact.

Forgive me for noticing, but it seems that you don’t really have any problems with my basic recitation of the alleged facts of evolution, but my interpretation of them.

I don’t have any problem acknowledging that the uniqueness of Australian species gives some credence to your argument that isolation is the key ingredient in the success of  speciation. However, I’ve got plenty of even better evidence to support my comprehensive argument that I call iterative creation.

I don’t deny the pure materialist argument can be made. My counterargument is that the pure materialist argument is fatally flawed. Corroborated veridical NDE perceptions, or brain-free consciousness, would utterly defeat the materialist argument, if true.

Our third point of contention was evidence of intelligent design versus evidence of design flaws. You claim that whale bones in fins mimic hand bones well enough to assume common ancestry.

That is a possibility, but why do you assume it to be the only alternative? There is ample evidence that many of your colleagues, in their own words, admit that the alternative, some form of creation, is simply “unthinkable.”

And that is the only reason for their disbelief.