Jack Chick's Big Daddy

I get het up sometimes. Here's an anti-evolution screed by evangelical Christianity's answer to Rush Limbaugh: Jack Chick's "Big Daddy". And here's where I go off on it.

Panel 4: It is unlikely that any real professor would act this way. However, as there's not an issue of fact, we'll just pass on.

Panel 7: Chick is correct; it is not against the law to mention the Bible or any other religious text in a classroom. However, he is wrong in that it represents an establishment of religion in violation of the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution to teach the Bible in public schools.

Panel 10: Chick lists "six basic concepts of evolution":

1. Cosmic Evolution: Big Bang makes hydrogen
2. Chemical Evolution: Higher elements evolve
3. Evolution of Stars and Planets from Gas
4. Organic Evolution: Life from rocks
5. Macro-Evolution: Changes between kinds of plants and animals
6. Micro-Evolution: Changes within kinds

Of these, the first three are not evolution of any kind; they're respectively cosmology, astrophysics, and astronomy. There's also ample simplification here. The Big Bang also created non-trivial amounts of helium. Item 2 actually comes after Item 3, for the most part; "higher"--read heavier--elements are created in stars. Elements up to iron are created as an ordinary part of the main sequence, while elements heavier than iron are created only in supernova. (I'll also mention that astronomers recognize a difference between primitive, metal-poor stars of the older generation and more recent, metal-rich, second or third generation stars, such as our sun.) By characterizing the Big Bang as evolution, Chick has placed himself firmly outside the mainstream of modern scientific understanding.

Panel 11: Chick claims that "only the last one has been observed and can be called science." There are many errors in that statement, some factual and some philosophical.

First, the Big Bang has been observed in a variety of ways. The majority of galaxies in the universe are receding from our own, which is evidence of expansion from a central point. Probably the most direct observation, however, is the cosmic microwave background, which can be thought of as the echo of the Big Bang.

Second, the evolution of higher elements has been observed in a variety of ways. Elements have been observed changing under many conditions in earthly laboratories, from natural radioactivity to nuclear bombardment. If what's happening in stars obeys the same rules as what we see in the lab, then so-called "chemical evolution" is an obvious consequence. More dramatically, we can actually see the elemental content of stars via their emission and absorption spectra, and we can see the dramatic change in composition when a supernova pops off. SN1987A produced a lot of wonderful data of this type.

Third, gas clouds coalesce into stars and planets over long periods of time, much longer than we could have observed directly. So we have not observed this sequence continuously in one location. However, the universe is very large. By looking in more than one direction, you can see the process captured in different stages. Several of the more spectacular photographs from the Hubble Space Telescope have shown various "star nurseries", which are places where we can see dust clouds in the process of becoming stars.

Fourth, the mechanism by which life was born on Earth is not understood in full detail. This is genuinely an area of uncertainty in biology. However, we have performed various experiments which agree with our understanding of what must have happened in general. For example, if you add some energy to a system containing methane, carbon dioxide, water, and ammonia (mimicking conditions on early Earth), you get amino acids (the precursors to proteins) in a very short time. The theory is that at some point, a molecule capable of self-replicating showed up. We don't yet know which molecule or exactly how it got started. But after the first self-replicating molecule, everything else would have happened very quickly. Simply beginning to apply variation and natural selection at that point would result in primitive chromosomes and cells before very long. It hasn't been directly observed, but there is no evidence that suggests that the general theory of the origin of life is inaccurate, and much that supports it.

Fifth, macroevolution has been routinely observed among living kinds, with the best examples among domesticated animals--dogs from wolves, cows from aurochs, maize from a kind of grass, etc. One very interesting experiment involved a forced speciation event in fruit flies--by breeding in a preference for different breeding locations, one team was able to produce two fruit fly populations that could no longer interbreed. One kind had become two, in just fifteen generations. Furthermore, the fossil record shows many thousands of macroevolutionary events. Biologists accept these as observations.

Finally, to claim that because something has not been observed that it is not science is a misunderstanding of the nature of science. Sciences like astronomy and paleontology are historical sciences--that is, they are (often) primarily focused on observing what is and what has been and on deducing the principles that are at work. Because history cannot be rerun, these sciences are not directly experimental in the way that physics and chemistry are. A physicist can design an experiment and run it over and over again, changing its parameters slightly each time. Researchers in the historical sciences have to be smarter. Unable to watch a single star's life cycle, the astronomer can nonetheless test her theories by observing similar stars, each at different points in their life cycle. A biologist can demonstrate the possibility of allopatric speciation in large, long-lived species by showing how it occurs in short-lived species. Lack of direct observation does not preclude science, which can proceed just as inevitably via inferential observation.

Panel 14: Two errors here. The simpler to deal with is Leakey's "human skull under a layer of rock dated at 212 million years". It has been understood since at least Charles Lyell's formulation of geology in the early 19th century that the ordinary processes of geology routinely change the orientation and even the order of rock layers. Without knowing more about the cite, I'm confident that Chick is simply misrepresenting a discovery whose position in the rock strata posed no controversy to the geologists and archeologists made it.

Slightly more difficult to deal with is Chick's assertion that "most experts now agree that Lucy was only an unusual chimpanzee". This is only difficult to deal with because Chick doesn't identify any of these "experts". For instance, Richard Leakey, whom Chick mentioned in the same paragraph, is certainly not one of those experts. In fact, no mainstream source identifies Lucy as anything other than a primitive hominid (Australopithecus afarensis), significantly closer to humans than to chimpanzees. E.g. "Australopithicus afarensis: The story of Lucy". Now, it is true that some of Lucy's anatomy is far more ape-like than human-like; she was, after all, a distant ancestor. And humans are sufficiently chimpanzee-like that Jared Diamond could suggest that we could reasonably be considered the "third chimpanzee". Nonetheless, no reasonable doubt exists among experts in human origins that Lucy is more human than chimp.

Panel 15: Louis Leakey considers Proconsul a sideline to both apes and humans.

Panel 17: Five pictures, including three lies, one mistake, and one fraud.

As noted above, Lucy is not a chimpanzee.

"Heidelberg Man": Homo heidelbergensis is a close relative; it is no surprise that its jaw "was conceded by many to be quite human". But, again, who are the "many"?

"Nebraska Man": A mistake made in 1922, never published or accepted scientifically. See this more extensive history. As that page notes, this was science working correctly: an incautious claim was evaluated and corrected by the ordinary processes of science.

"Piltdown Man": A fraud, distrusted from the beginning by all non-Britannic archeologists and disproved by the ordinary working processes of good science. See the talk.origins Piltdown page.

"Peking Man": Chick claims that the fossils have disappeared. This is a lie. H. erectus fossils of the appropriate age and location are relatively common. E.g. these pictures of Peking Man skulls. The "disappearance" refers to a single incident in which fragments from ten skeletons were incorrectly reported as ten full skeletons in the newspapers of the time; it was reported correctly in the scientific literature.

Panel 18: Four more pictures, three of which lie or distort.

"Neanderthal Man": Considerably more than one skeleton of H. sapiens neandertalensis exist; furthermore, distinguished, elderly scientists such as Dr. Cave are often wrong, when they speak singly. Dr. Cave's peers and successors, needless to say, disagree with him concerning the nature of our cousin's skeleton.

"New Guinea Man": I presume that Chick is here talking about the discovery of Stone Age tribes living in the New Guinean highlands. However, no one working in the field today has any suggestion that these highlanders are anything but anatomically modern humans.

"Cro-Magnon Man": Chick asks "what's the difference?" You put him on the chart, sir. Surely the explanation required is due from you? As it happens, you're right: there's not much difference between Cro-Magnon and modern humans. Cro-Magnon was "anatomically modern" in the parlance. Not yet fully domesticated, however, Cro-Magnon skulls and bones were typically more robust than civilized humans. There are also distinct technological differences. However, by this stage of human evolution, the differences are far more a matter of anthropological concern than they are a matter of anatomical concern.

Panel 20: As presented, yes, of course, this is circular reasoning. However, it ignores the fact that we do have independent means of dating rock layers that serve adequately to define the age of the entirety of the world's strata from the oldest surviving rocks of northern Canada to the youngest rocks now forming in the Mid-Atlantic Ridge. There are a myriad of ways of dating rock, from the radioactive content of microscopic zircons to the order and duration of Earth's magnetic pole flipping. Here's what's even more important than that there are independent measures of rock's age: the methods, when we can use more than one of them at a time, agree. If you get the same answer when you ask the question two different ways, you can have a lot more confidence in it.

Panel 21: Again, the well-understood phenomena of Lyellian geology suffice to explain the phenomenon of cross-stratum objects.

Panel 22: As noted, Ernst Haeckel's "ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny" claim has been understood as incorrect--in that phrasing--for more than a century. No modern lecturer would repeat that claim. As for the textbook, well, science textbooks below the college level stink on ice. As has been repeatedly decried by scientists like Richard Feynmann and Stephen Jay Gould, primary and secondary science textbooks are inaccurate, incestuous, and perpetuate lines of thought long since discredited in the modern understanding of the field. Textbook writers simply do not go to the primary sources; they go to other textbooks. As Gould noted, all Eohippus are the size of fox terriers, even though the animal's name is properly Hyracotherium and few American students would have any reason to know how big a fox terrier is.

Panel 23-24: I'm not sure what Chick's point is; the coccyx may well have a use as a point of attachment for muscles, but it's also clearly homologous to the tail that most mammals have. As such, it's pretty good evidence that we used to have a tail, too.

Panel 25: With the existence of fossils like Ambulocetus and Rodhocetus, we have a lot better evidence that whales evolved on land than the detached diminished pelvis found in the body wall of some modern whales.

Panel 26: Why would these bones look like a diminished pelvis if they weren't, in fact, a diminished pelvis? In any case, they're definitely not necessary for reproduction, as most whales don't have them, and even in the ones that do, they don't serve any particular purpose. (In all likelihood, however, the extinct primitive whale Basilosaurus still had external rear legs that probably did serve as claspers during mating.)

Chick also asks "isn't losing something the opposite of evolution"? No, of course not. Evolution is change, not advancement; it is change directed by current circumstance, not towards a greater destiny. A vestigial organ is absolutely a kind of evolution; species can gain or lose features as the needs of their environment change.

Panel 27: Gluons cannot be observed as independent particles. However, the mechanisms and equations of how they interact with matter are well understood. You can make predictions based on the existence of gluons that match observations that are not explained as well by theories that do not include gluons.

Panel 28: We know that protons, neutrons, and electrons exist in exactly the same way we know gluons exist: observations match the theory and are not explained as well by other theories. If you accept one, you are fatuous at best not to accept the other. Also, electrons don't exactly orbit the nucleus like a little solar system, at least not per se. Ask me some other time about the shape of electron orbitals (and prepare for a rant about why D-wave explosions in space movies are stupid).

Panel 29: Obviously, gluons are the answer. Actually, it's even a second-order answer, as it's gluons (the "strong nuclear force") that hold nucleons together; nuclei are held together by the "residual strong force", which can be thought of as a force mediated by virtual mesons, mostly pions. But ultimately, it's gluons.

Panel 31: Of course, Chick has been building up to this: all of physics is correct except that the nucleus is held together by Jesus. That's what Chick says.

Misinformation, lies, mistakes, straw men, and the most unexpected scientific conclusion since Aristotle's crocodiles and melons. That's Jack Chick, kids.

Posted by Greg at January 6, 2003 4:58 PM