Thursday, August 21, 2008

Icons of Creationism

I just read the latest eSkeptic and its article about the famed Icon of NeoCreationism, the bacterial flagellum. Apparently, the drawings that Behe and others have been showing is only an artist's depiction. In fact, even the black and white photographs shown on the PBS Documentary of the Dover Trial are composite images: That is, many photographs were taken and a smooth sort of "average" of them was depicted. In reality, the flagellum looks nothing like this. It looks like uneven globs of protein molecules. In essence, the flagellum has been made to look much more like a symmetrical and beautifully crafted molecular "machine" than it really is. Of course, creationists will retort that despite the glossy images, their main point is unchanged and the flagella is irreducibly complex**.

But they did not accept this answer when it came to "Haeckel's embryos"; and the author of the article did not fail to notice the irony. When scientists pointed out that vertebrate embryos are still very similar in their early stages, and that the genes controlling development are highly similar across these species, it fell on deaf ears.

Please, creationists, give us just a little consistency.

** By the way, the flagellum is "irreducibly complex" but not unevolvable:
http://www.talkdesign.org/faqs/flagellum.html

1 comment:

Psiloiordinary said...

Hey Ryan,

Just posted that link from our BCSE blog.

Will also put you in our side bar.

Would you do the same for us?

Regards,

Psi