From Genesis to Genetics: The Case of Evolution and Creationism

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Summary: The Creationist View of Science Explored
Review: This book describes the way creationists approach evolution. If they can find just one thing that evolutionary biologists have yet to explain, they figure that one thing is enough to throw the whole thing out. Such a view is just wrong, and shows an abysmal understanding - or abuse - of science. There are more than enough transitional fossils to convince a fair minded skeptic, but no creationist would ever agree to classify anything as a transitional fossil. Not Archeoptryx, not Acanthostega (sp?), not the mammal-like reptiles. The beautiful documention of the evolution of the mammalian jaw from the reptilian jaw should convince anybody, but it will never convince a creationist.

Of course, there is a lot that scientists don't know about evolution. But there is a lot that we DO know, and there is just too much evidence to simply toss out evolution. This is a theory that will not go away, although I wouldn't be surprised to see it change as we learn more about genetics.

This book is not written for creationists, but for people who might be sympathetic to their cause. If people would learn more about the nature of science, they would be offended by the utter dishonesty and lack of integrity you find in scientific creationism.

Rating:
Summary: Worth Reading
Review: What a breadth of knowledge this man has! What humanity! What generousity of spirit! I read it in one sitting because I found it so fascinating. It was worth sacrificing a weekend.

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Summary: Shows what evolution explains, but misses the point of faith
Review: Why do we need another book that seems to explain 19th century scientific issues to a high school level audience ? The very real and serious undermining of science education that has been accomplished by various cultural movements in the United States seems to have forced us to retreat to this kind of reinforcement of basic scientific reasoning that previously could have been taken for granted.

The core of this book is a quick 20,000 foot high overview of the fossil record, Linnean taxonomy, the common cell structure, vestiges of evoltuon in embryological development, vestigal structures in fully developed organisms, layers of sediment, radiocarbon dating, and modern genetics. We get a good, if very simplified, presentation of the evidence that entire species of living things have appeared and gone extinct over the eons.

Moore also reviews the reasons why Biblical scholars have different interpretations of Genesis. Unfortunately, Moore never seems to fully appreciate why these modern lines of thought might not be convincing and might present a problem for a lot of people.

Between the lines you can sense the real frustration in this book, of science educators faced with the task of trying to teach to an audience relatively unaware of the tradition of causal models and scientific descriptions of the natural world, and better prepared to debate metaphysics than evaluate scientific theories.

Just as the transmission of heritable characteristics through reproduction requires a stable genome, the transmission of culture, whether it be scientific or religious in nature, requires a grounding of trust. The message we get from Moore is that his audience can't even be assumed to trust him that a Biblical narrative has a wholly different character than a scientific decription, they have to see it for themselves. And of course he doesn't trust his audience to even know that much.

Moore explains why each set of findings is better predicted by an evolutionary account than by the account in Genesis, even if it could be reconciled in some way with Genesis as an afterthought. He is more sympathetic to "faith" than anti-religious authors like Richard Dawkins, but he doesn't give his audience much credit at all.

Many aren't ever going to be convinced to stop trying to reconcile Genesis with science in some sense. There's an element of futility in some of Moore's arguments to take a view of faith as something useful and almost quaint.

We see how all sorts of predictions made by evolutionary theory were eventually validated by observations, and how the whole puzzle gradually has come together in the 20th century to eliminate nearly all the pieces that were missing in the 19th century when Darwin and Wallace first proposed a basic natural mechanism for natural selection.

Although it is all pretty much laid out here for them, I can't imagine that very many people who think it is their Christian duty to oppose evolutionary theory will be persuaded very far by this book to learn about evolutionary biology or let their children learn about it. Not because it isn't persuasive logically, but because it doesn't really address their blindspots nor their concerns realistically. It is sympathetic but not empathetic regarding relgious faith, it doesn't adequately address the nagging concern of creationists that naturalism regarding origins undermines morality.

Finally, the book doesn't go very far demonstrating what I think is the main *non-religious* conceptual sticking point of anti-evolutionists; how small variants can possibly accumulate in a meaningful way over time if nothing is guiding each act of selection. It seems fairly common to hear creationists arguing that it is unlikely for random mutations to ever add up to useful variation in structure. Clearly if we are to reach someone with that odd view of the process we have to find a way to describe to them in simple terms how the genome changes and how changes in the genome relate to changes in phenotype.

The most powerful notion of all and the whole point of Darwin's theory is that selective survival of variants cause stable features of the environment to guide the process, even without a plan. We can't expect someone to understand adaptation through natural selection if they are imagining that dinosaurs jumped off of cliffs until one finally achieved a useful mutation and sprouted wings and turned into a bird. This is very close to the account implied by the recent movie "X-Men," and I suspect that many consider this almost realistic.

Richard Dawkins is one of the most talented authors for describing the accumulation of tiny useful features, but Dawkins unfortunately is so hostile to religion that he is one of the least likely people to be read carefully by creationists, although he would be perhaps the most helpful for them conceptually if they sincerely want to understand the argument for adaptation through natural selection.

This is a good book, but if Moore had a more realistic understanding of the profound role of faith in the lives of most of Darwin's detractors and borrowed a few pages from Dawkins to illustrate the piecewise accumulation of features, it would have been even better. The logical structure and explanations for understanding the evidence for evolution are a little easier to follow here than in Ken Miller's "Finding Darwin's God," but that book does a better job addressing creationism more directly.

Of course, even with these changes, this still will not convince many of the "intelligent design" crowd about the importance of evolution in biology. Perhaps Pennock's recent book on "Intelligent Design Creationism and Its Critics" would be a good supplement as well, if it indeed still makes sense to argue 19th century creationism in 21st century biology classes in order to teach evolution.

I guess the best hope here is that this book might help redeem a few more of the uncertains in high school or undergrad biology who are motivated enough to read it as a supplement to the sketchy account in their texts.