Over at the Guardian, Oliver Burkeman, a writer who apparently knows nothing about evolution, has a long piece called “Why everything you’ve been told about evolution is wrong.”  Everything?  Really?  Burkeman seems to have a beef with Richard Dawkins, and seems to take delight in how the new “evolution revolution” would vex him:

What if Darwin’s theory of evolution – or, at least, Darwin’s theory of evolution as most of us learned it at school and believe we understand it – is, in crucial respects, not entirely accurate? Such talk, naturally, is liable to drive evolutionary biologists into a rage, or, in the case of Richard Dawkins, into even more of a rage than usual.

Well, maybe Burkeman’s insistence that popular notions about evolution are all wrong is just journalistic puffery.  So what is the new finding that overthrows Darwinism?

Epigenetics.

There are several definitions of “epigenetics” (it once meant simply “development”), but Burkeman uses the term in its more modern sense as “inheritance not based on coding changes in the DNA.” Burkeman cites a couple of recent studies in which nongenetic, developmentally caused changes in an organism (like alterations in physiology due to starvation) can be passed on to one or two generations of  its descendants.  The offspring of stressed Swedish chickens, for example, have difficulty navigating mazes. He gives another two-generation example of epigenesis from humans.

This thin evidence, apparently, is why modern evolutionary theory is wrong.  And so Burkeman gets in another slap at not only Dawkins, but Daniel Dennett:

As years of bestselling books by Dawkins, Daniel Dennett and others have seeped into the culture, we’ve come to understand that the awesome power of natural selection – frequently referred to as the best idea in the history of science – lies in the sheer elegance of the way such simple principles have generated the unbelievable complexities of life. From two elementary notions – random mutation, and the filtering power of the environment – have emerged, over millennia, such marvels as eyes, the wings of birds and the human brain.

It not be immediately obvious why this has such profound implications for evolution. In the way it’s generally understood, the whole point of natural selection – the so-called “modern synthesis” of Darwin’s theories with subsequent discoveries about genes – is its beautiful, breathtaking, devastating simplicity. In each generation, genes cause random mutations, making offspring subtly different from their parents; those mutations that enhance an organism’s abilities to thrive and reproduce in its own particular environment will tend to spread through populations, while those that make successful breeding less likely will eventually peter out.  Yet epigenetics suggests this isn’t the whole story.

All I can say to this is: “Profound implications my tuchus!” There are a handful of examples showing that environmentally-induced changes can be passed from one generation to the next.  In nearly all of these examples, the changes disappear after one or two generations, so they couldn’t effect permanent evolutionary change.  The proponents of epigenesis as an important factor in evolution, like Eva Jablonka and Marion Lamb, always wind up talking about the same tired old examples, like cases of coat color change in mice and flower pattern in toadflax.  I am not aware of a single case in which an adaptive change in an organism—or any change that has been fixed in a species—rests on inheritance that is not based on changes in the DNA. (For a refutation of the pro-epigenesis arguments that Jablonka and Lamb make in their 2005 book, see Haig [2007].)

Moreover, some examples of “nongenetic” inheritance that do have adaptive significance, such as differential methylation of paternal versus maternal chromosomes, ultimately rest on changes in DNA that promote that differential methylation. And this “inheritance” lasts only one generation, for the methylation profile is reset in each sex every generation.

In contrast to the very few cases of one- or two-generation inheritance that cause nonadaptive changes in the phenotype stands the very, very large number of studies in which inherited changes within and among species map to the DNA.  These include every case of evolutionary response to artificial or human-generated selection, adaptive changes within species (e.g., spiny-ness in sticklebacks), and differences among species in both morphology (e.g., the color differences in fruit flies I study) and reproductive barriers (the many mapping studies of “hybrid sterility” and “hybrid inviability” genes). Burkeman, of course, doesn’t mention these cases: it would ruin his nice story.

If we look just at studies of the inheritance of organismal  changes that have evolved over time (and many of these would have detected profound epigenetic effects), the score would be something like this:  DNA  757, Epigenesis 0. (I’m just making these numbers up, of course, to make a point.)  If we look at all “inherited changes”, regardless of their evolutionary importance, we would have a handful of epigenetic changes versus literally thousands of DNA-based changes.  So how can Burkeman say that epigenesis will profoundly revise our view of evolution?

Now I’m not saying that epigenesis was completely unimportant in evolution.  Prions (cases in protein shape that don’t reflect changes in protein sequence), for example, could be considered cases of epigenetic inheritance, and might have played a role in the evolution of some species.  What I am saying is that there is virtually no evidence that epigenetic inheritance has been important in evolution, and that the phenomenon seems, at this point, seems too infrequent to warrant rethinking the tenets of neo-Darwinism.

Burkeman notes that epigenetic inheritance appears to refute one of the prime tenets of evolutionary psychology: the idea that DNA-based changes in human behavior evolved by natural selection:

And now, if epigenetics and other developments are coming to suggest that environment can alter heredity, the very terms of the debate – of nature versus nurture – suddenly become shaky. It’s not even a matter of settling on a compromise, a “mixture” of nature and nurture. Rather, the concepts of “nature” and “nurture” seem to be growing meaningless. What does “nature” even mean if you can nurture the nature of your descendants?

Now, I’ve been a critic of the excesses of some evolutionary psychologists, but it’s simply insane to dismiss that field—and, by extension, the entire field of behavior genetics—because there is some thin evidence for inheritance of acquired traits.

Inevitably, Burkeman got wind of Jerry Fodor and Massimo Piattelli-Palmarini’s new book, What Darwin Got Wrong, a profoundly misguided critique of natural selection. Burkeman notes, correctly, that the book has met with fierce opposition from philosophers and biologists, but insists that it still has value:

It would be jawdroppingly surprising, to say the least, were Fodor to be right. A safer, if mealy-mouthed, conclusion to draw is that his work acts as an important warning to those of us who think we understand natural selection. It’s probably not a bankrupt concept, as Fodor claims. But nor should laypeople assume that it’s self-evidently simple and exhaustively true.

Probably not a bankrupt concept? Not self-evidently simple? (It is—that’s one of its beauties!) Not exhaustively true? (What does that mean? Is there any explanation for adaptation other than natural selection? Fodor has certainly never given one.)

Burkeman’s article represents the most self-serving, lazy, overblown, and irresponsible strain of science journalism.  He lays out strong charges against modern evolutionary biology, and then doesn’t bother to consult a single expert to see if those charges stick.  He touts epigenesis to the skies, but doesn’t bother to find out whether its proponents may have exaggerated its evolutionary importance. (That wouldn’t have required much digging!)  Burkeman apparently lacks the ability to adjudicate claims and controversies in biology.  Granted, we don’t expect all journalists to be able to do this, but if you don’t know what you’re talking about, you ask the experts.

Finally, Burkeman is not even a science writer—he’s a “features” writer. What business does he have telling the public that everything they know about evolution is wrong? He appears to be motivated far more by an animus against Richard Dawkins, and a desire to write catchy and sensationalistic science journalism, than by a desire to get the facts.

Burkeman is an ignorant fool.  He belongs not at the Guardian but on page 3 of the Sun, where he can exaggerate and hyperventilate to his heart’s content.

UPDATE:  The Guardian is backpedaling: there’s been a rebuttal piece posted on the Guardian’s own Comment is Free site (for the link, see Matthew Cobb’s comment #15 on this post).

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Jablonka E, and M. Lamb M. 2005. Evolution in four dimensions: genetic, epigenetic, behavioral and symbolic variation in the history of life. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA

Haig, D. 2007.  Weissman Rules! OK?  Epigenetics and the Lamarckian temptation. Biology & Philosophy 22:415-428

Greta Christina goes after Andrew Brown’s snivelling defense of the Catholic Church.

Russell Blackford continues the Guardian’s series on evolution and morality.

Fess Parker, my boyhood hero, dies at 85.

Fig. 1.  “Be sure you’re right first, then go ahead.”

One of the letters in today’s Durango Herald (Colorado)

Christian texts right to dump Darwin

by Paul Bynum

It is amazing how the evolutionists react when their messiah, Charles Darwin, is ignored or otherwise abused. The very fact that he is not given top billing in Christian-based biology textbooks for the home-schooling market sends them in an absolute thither [sic]. In an Associated Press story (“Top home-school texts dismiss Darwin,” Herald, March 7), Jerry Coyne, an evolutionary professor at the University of Chicago, went so far as to say, “I feel strongly about this. These books are promulgating lies to kids.”

Lies? I believe that opinion may depend on which side of the creation coin you come down on.

On the humanistic, God-denying, evolutionary side, you can tell children they are nothing more than animals that appeared by mere chance through a prolonged process that began in a great big explosion that over millions and millions of years now allows them to wonder and care how they got here and what it might matter in the eons to come. If they are just animals, why not act the part? Why not blow away the other animal that stole your peanut butter sandwich at lunch?

On the creation side of the coin, children are told they are created in the image of a loving God that cares for each and every one of them. Their Christian home-schooling parents do, indeed, want to give their children religious and moral instruction that teaches them they are more than just another animal in the evolutionary food chain. In order to give this type of education to their children, textbooks are needed that are from a godly, biblical-based point of view. Not a Charles Darwin, God-denying view point.

So why should the evolutionists blow a gasket when textbooks are released giving a different point of view? They want God totally out of any educational process and bring Christian home schooling under the state-controlled school system, thereby eliminating free choice of your child’s future.

Paul Bynum, Durango

This letter encapsulates one of the faithful’s commonest objections to evolution: it does away with God-given morality, thereby giving us license to act like beasts.  Accommodationists would have us believe that if Mr. Bynum and his ilk were politely informed that many religious people have no problem accepting evolution, they’d suddenly abjure their views and embrace Darwinism.  The morality argument would vanish!

And if you believe that, then I have a a Ray Comfort edition of The Origin to sell you.

(Bynum and his Durago buddy Gary Anderson were involved in a bit of P. Z. Myers-bashing four years ago.)

Imagine being forced to go to work every day and, as part of the job, profess something that you absolutely don’t believe.  More than that: at least once a week you have to publicly profess it, and also counsel other people on the explicit premise that you share the beliefs you reject.  In other words, you’re forced to live a lie.

Such is the position of clergy who don’t believe in God.  Yes, there are some of them, and they’re the subject of a new study by Daniel Dennett and Linda LaScola from Tufts University, “Preachers who are not believers.” You can find that 28-page study at the Washingon Post‘s “On Faith” section (click the link on that page to download the pdf).  I recommend reading it if you have time.

Dennett and LaScola managed to find and interview five Protestant “nonbelievers.” Given the liberality of today’s clergy, and the resistance of many nonbelieving preachers to participate in the study, this may be only the tip of the iceberg.  Although some interviewees accept a numinous notion that might be termed “God,” none of them believe in the theistic God limned by the faith they profess.  Here’s the testimony of “Jack,” a Southern Baptist preacher:

“OK, this God created me. It’s a perfect God that knows everything; can do anything. And somehow it got messed up, and it’s my fault. So he had to send his son to die for me to fix it. And he does. And now I’m supposed to beat myself to death the rest of my life over it. It makes no sense to me. Don’t you think a God could come up with a better plan than that?”

“What kind of personality; what kind of being is this that had to create these other beings to worship and tell him how wonderful he is? That makes no sense, if this God is all-knowing and all-wise and all-wonderful. I can’t comprehend that that’s what kind of person God is.”

“Every church I’ve been in preached that the Jonah in the Whale story is literally true. And I’ve never believed that. You mean to tell me a human was in the belly of that whale? For three days? And then the whale spit him out on the shoreline? And, of course, their convenient logic is, ‘Well, God can do anything.’”

“Well, I think most Christians have to be in a state of denial to read the Bible and believe it. Because there are so many contradicting stories. You’re encouraged to be violent on one page, and you’re encouraged to give sacrificial love on another page. You’re encouraged to bash a baby’s head on one page, and there’s other pages that say, you know, give your brother your fair share of everything you have if they ask for it.”

“But if God was going to reveal himself to us, don’t you think it would be in a way that we wouldn’t question? …I mean, if I was wanting to have…people teach about the Bible…I would probably make sure they knew I existed. …I mean, I wouldn’t send them mysterious notes, encrypted in a way that it took a linguist to figure out.”

I can’t help but note that “Jack” was influenced by an classic argument for atheism:  if God wants us to know his presence, why is He always hidden?  Isn’t it more parsimonious to posit the absence of God rather than a God who, for reasons that elude us, is always just around the corner? Theologians, of course, have lots of arguments why the absence of God is precisely the evidence that God exists.

Surprisingly, two of the clergy lost their faith, in part, by reading new atheist books by Sam Harris and Christopher Hitchens.  Even Bill Maher’s movie, Religulous, influenced one of them. So much for the notion that new atheism makes no converts.  “Adam” speaks:

“I tell you, the book that just grabbed my mind and just twisted it around, was Christopher Hitchens’ God is Not Great. It was shocking, some of that stuff – the throws and jabs against faith and stuff. I would think, ‘He’s crazy.’ But then I’d say, ‘No. Step back and read it for what it is.’

The preachers’ testimony makes a sad but enlightening read.  The road to eroded faith is tortuous, but often involved exposure to Biblical scholarship at the seminary or graduate school.  Faced with the notion that the Bible is a human construct, and not the inerrant word of God, several of these preachers began to question everything.

Why do these preachers stay in the faith and on the job? Three reasons, mostly.  One is financial: what else could they do with their training if they left the ministry? Often they have neither equity (living in church-owned houses) nor pensions.  Another, and perhaps more important, reason is that an admission of unbelief  would shock and disappoint their friends and family.  This is a very powerful motive, for facing the truth would rip asunder your network of social and family support.  We’ve encountered this before in the admission of Karl Giberson,  still a professed believer, head of BioLogos, and someone who may be teetering on the edge of apostasy:

As a purely practical matter, I have compelling reasons to believe in God. My parents are deeply committed Christians and would be devastated, were I to reject my faith. My wife and children believe in God, and we attend church together regularly. Most of my friends are believers. I have a job I love at a Christian college that would be forced to dismiss me if I were to reject the faith that underpins the mission of the college. Abandoning belief in God would be disruptive, sending my life completely off the rails.

Finally, many of these preachers like their work, especially the part of the job that involves helping troubled people. Jack again:

“And that’s what people told me my best skills were – dealing with people. …I can be with somebody and genuinely have empathy with them, and concern and love and help them get through a difficult situation. And every time that I did it, those people thought that I was wonderful. And they would just bend over backwards to tell me ‘Thank you.’ That was one of my strengths. …Being with somebody when their husband died. And just holding their hand, or putting my arm around them. But I never said ‘Now, he’s in heaven. Aren’t you glad for him?’”

There’s absolutely no doubt that faith, and religious institutions, have provided important help for those in need or in trouble.  Some religions do this more than others.  Sikhs, for example, seem to have a well-developed system of intra-faith welfare.  Such help doesn’t, of course, prove the existence of God or support any of the fact claims of faith, nor does it offset all the harms that faith has wrought on humanity.  But isn’t it a shame that there aren’t secular communities where those with altruistic instincts can “minister” without hypocrisy or fear?

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The On Faith page features commentary on the Dennett and LaScola article by seventeen other people, including ex-Bishop John Shelby Spong, writer Rebecca Goldstein, theologian Martin Marty, and—God help us—Deepak Chopra. I haven’t yet read these.  There are also (surprisingly few) comments by readers.

The Huffington Post’s new “Religion” section is a mixed bag.  It is full of their usual woo, but also has a fair dollop of articles on atheism.  Tuesday’s column by Eric Michael Johnson, a journalist and graduate student in history, asserts in its title that “The Unseen and Unknowable Has No Place in Science.”

Johnson was raised as a Lutheran, but jettisoned his faith when he realized that, unlike science, it was fully prepared to accept things for which there was no evidence.  A snippet:

Faith, as Gary Whittenberger wrote in Skeptic magazine, has multiple common uses.

“Faith” may refer to a religion or worldview, as in “My faith is Islam.” It may refer to an attitude of trust or confidence, as in “I have faith in my physician.” Or it may refer to believing propositions without evidence or out of proportion to the available evidence.

It is this latter use of faith that is incompatible with science. His Divine Grace A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada, founder of the International Society for Krishna Consciousness (which has 170 Hare Krishna centers in Europe and North America alone), was up front that he denied the evidence for evolution. Why? He didn’t argue that the methods employed may have biased the results and that he would reserve judgment until the studies were replicated. He didn’t dispute the sample size in a given study or suggest a separate interpretation of the observable facts. He completely disregarded the entire pursuit of such knowledge because it contradicted his faith in a prime mover. His faith told him that he was correct, regardless of what the facts might be. There is a word for that, when you prefer your own private fantasy to the real world. I think Richard Dawkins used it as part of the title to one of his more popular books.

Yes, religion is incompatible with science. This doesn’t mean, of course, that religious people are incapable of doing science. Far from it. There are certain questions that don’t probe too deeply into the foundations of a person’s faith and they have no problem employing their reason to its fullest in those cases. But when reason starts to get uncomfortably close (as it has for Francis Collins, Deepak Chopra and Michael Behe) well, that’s when the desperate appeal to fuzzy thinking becomes apparent. Because the assumption of God is so obvious to them (and I’m sure they feel it powerfully) the evidence suggesting that evolution follows natural mechanisms and has no need of a supernatural intelligence must therefore be wrong. They’ll bend over backwards trying to rationalize irrationality.

In this week’s Nature, philosopher/biologist Massimo Pigliucci reviews What Darwin Got Wrong, the book-length attack on natural selection penned by Jerry Fodor and (the unrelated) Massimo Piattelli-Palmarini:

By misusing philosophical distinctions and misinterpreting the literature on natural selection, Fodor and Piattelli-Palmarini make a mess of what could have been an important contribution. The authors are correct in two of their assessments. Namely that: mainstream evolutionary biology has become complacent with the nearly 70-year-old Modern Synthesis, which reconciled the original theory of natural selection with Mendelian and population genetics; and that the field needs to extend the conceptual arsenal of evolutionary theory. But in claiming that there are fundamental flaws in an edifice that has withstood a century and a half of critical examination, Fodor and Piattelli-Palmarini err horribly. . .

. . . Fodor and Piattelli-Palmarini offer only sterile and wrongheaded criticism. Fortunately, other philosophers of science and theoretical biologists are coming together to clarify and build on the conceptual foundations of science and explore issues of its practice; this is a better way to bridge the two cultures.

The “important contribution” that F&P-P fail to make, apparently, is the contribution that Pigliucci himself is bent on making, for that “extension” of neo-Darwinism is laid out in a soon-to-appear book, Evolution: The Extended Synthesis, edited by Pigliucci and Gerd Müller.

And Fodor and Piattelli-Palmarini?  Well, they’ll claim that Pigliucci is just another philosopher who has failed to grasp their point.

My own review of What Darwin Got Wrong will appear in four weeks.