Darwinists and intelligent design theorists agree on some things. For example, thanks to millennia of human breeding programs, there are hundreds of horse breeds ranging from miniature horses to huge draft animals.

Horses were domesticated in Central Asia some 6,000 years ago. Today, most horse breeds result directly from human selection programs. But there is good evidence to suggest that, even before humans domesticated them, horses and their relatives, including zebras, donkeys, and other equine species, had a complicated and multi-branched genealogy with criss-crossing bloodlines on several continents.

Here is where Darwinists and ID theorists part company: Darwinists argue that the horse is simply a product of natural selection acting on random mutation. ID theorists leave open the possibility that the horse's complicated genealogy is evidence of design.

Darwinist Philosophy Limits Explanations

As Jonathan Wells points out in Icons of Evolution, claims about horse evolution have not fared well.

Almost as soon as Othniel Marsh, a Yale professor, published a drawing showing the supposed path of horse evolution from a four-toed ancestor to a one-toed (hoofed) animal in 1882 his notion of a linear pathway was challenged. Fossil evidence actually suggests that horse evolution is not linear, it's more like a tree with many branches, some dead.

But Marsh's suggested path bolstered the idea that there was a direction to evolution. This could be due to design by a creator or an internal mechanism driven by natural laws, in charge of evolution. This view, common in Darwin's time, is called orthogenesis (meaning 'straight' and 'origin') But no biological mechanism that leads to any specific evolutionary goal has been found.

Today, Darwinists reject the concept of goal-directed evolution. Yet that rejection of a goal is philosophical, not scientific. For example, Dawkins defined biology in his 1986 book, The Blind Watchmaker, as "the study of complicated things that give the appearance of being designed for a purpose."

 If actual design is rejected in principle no evidence can be cited for it. But given the horses’ excellent ability to return to and adapt to their feral state and thrive in harsh climates, they do seem to be elegantly constructed.

Horse evolution is not a very good illustration of Darwinist theory

Horses are thought to have originated in North America where fossil remnants of their family tree go back 55 million years.

By the time horses went extinct in North America over 10,000 years ago, they filled forest and plains niches on several continents. It’s not entirely clear why they went extinct in North America, but it may have had something to do with the ice age that overtook the continent during that period.

Modern horses in North America, whether wild or tame, do not descend from the original North American animals. They descend from domesticated horses brought to the continent by Europeans. The Spanish conquistador Hern·n CortÈz was the first European to bring the horse back to North America, in the late 16th century.

The horse's family tree includes many extinct species. Genus Equus (horses, donkeys, asses, and zebras) is the only living branch in this bushy tree. Modern and extinct horses have adapted to geography and climate by changing their size and diet. Ancient horses even roamed continents to find better territory.

Still, the belief first popularized in the 19th century that there is a single linear evolutionary sequence of horses, extending from tiny fox-sized forest dwellers to modern horses, has remained popular with textbook writers.

But, as Bruce J. MacFadden Curator of Vertebrate Paleontology at the Florida Museum of Natural History, points out, horses did not evolve in a straight line from the fox-sized forest browser to modern horses.

Until recently, horses were thought to have moved progressively from a forest diet of leaves, to a plains diet of grass. But fossilized teeth show that some horses fed on grasses while their contemporaries fed on leaves. Some species ate both grass and leaves. And some apparently returned to a forest diet after they had already made a transition to a plains diet.

In Fossil Horses from "Eohippus" (Hyracotherium) to Equus: Scaling, Cope's Law, and Evolution in Body Size, Bruce MacFadden points out that horses also violate another expectation of Darwinism. Cope's Law states that species tend to grow larger over generations. But horses did not always become larger. Some species actually got smaller.

Even today we see a huge diversity in size among horses. Miniature horses may be as small as 18 inches (45 cm) high while the Shire stallion may be almost 6 feet high (178 cm) and weigh as much as 1100 kilograms. Twenty-first century horses adapt to Canadian muskeg, semi-desert prairie, and North African deserts with surprising ease.

But even after centuries of domestication, horses often escape human handlers. Wild horses have re-adapted to harsh climates, meager diets, and rough terrain. So Darwinists and ID theorists agree that horses have adapted to different environments. In the case of domesticated horses, design (in the form of artificial selection) played a role; in the case of feral horses, it did not.

But is the eminently adaptable horse itself the result of design? While ID is open to exploring that possibility, Darwinism rejects it outright.

There has been a Darwinian vs. human-directed evolution experiment running in North America for centuries. It began when Spanish ships arrived in North America at the end of the 15th century. The experiment continued as waves of Europeans followed the Spanish, from France, the United Kingdom and other parts of Europe.

Wild Horses Show Common Traits

Horses that must survive in rocky terrain without human assistance tend to be stocky, with shorter legs, and bigger, tougher hooves. This is especially true in harsh northern climates. For example, the Yakut breed developed itself by natural selection. This heavy-set horse has a dense, thick coat to protect it from the harsh conditions of northern and central Siberia.

The Sorraia horse in southern Iberia is the last remnant of the indigenous wild horses that once grazed that region. It is stocky and short, standing 14 hands high. The horses owned by Spanish colonizers in the Americas had some Sorraia blood. So the Sorraia is also a forebear of the North American Mustang.

Despite the fact that some breeds, such as the Sorraia, are not the product of domestication, the Przewalski ‘s (pronounced sha-val-ski's) horse, is often touted as the world's only truly wild horse. It has 66 chromosomes as opposed to 64 found in other breeds, including the Sorraia. This stocky horse sheds its upright mane and often behaves like a zebra. It may be an offshoot from the horse family tree rather than a forerunner of other horse breeds.

The Mustang Shows Wild Ancestry

 Mustangs, descendants of European horses that escaped their human handlers and became feral, are uniquely adapted to their environment. They share many traits with the wild horses noted above and provide a demonstration of Darwinian evolution in action.

 While Spanish horses made the biggest genetic contribution to the North American Mustang, horses from New France and the British colonies (modern Canada and the eastern United States) also contributed to its genetic makeup. Spanish Mustangs, found in the Western United States, have larger heads, longer ears, better eyesight and a keener sense of direction than their domesticated ancestors did. In many cases they resemble their Iberian cousin, the Sorraia.

Canadian mustangs , which also have Spanish bloodlines, have developed large hooves to carry them over the muskeg and to help them paw the snow for feed in winter. Extremely strong, they have short, thick legs and stocky muscled bodies. Their Roman noses help them forage for food in underbrush and snow.

Natural selection sorts traits that already exist in the horse, but are usually suppressed by human breeders. These traits become the norm among mustangs because they aid survival in the wild. But natural selection did not produce new traits. They were already there.

Hardy Canadian Breeds Demonstrate Similar Traits

Human breeders, as intelligent designers, have also selected for traits similar to natural selection, to deal with harsh conditions. New France and Newfoundland were among the most isolated colonies in the New World. Not surprisingly, domestic horse populations in these colonies were often isolated from breeding with new bloodlines. The Canadian Horse and the Newfoundland Pony, are short, stocky and muscular, ideally suited for pulling ploughs and surviving January blizzards.

The Canadian, descended from French-Norman breeds brought to New France in the sixteenth century, is shorter and hardier. This 'little iron horse' served its country in the Boer War, found its way to West Indian Sugar Plantations, and was highly prized by Americans who bred it into the Morgan, Tennessee Walking Horse, Standardbred, and the American Saddlebred.

The Newfoundand Pony is the result of three centuries of interbreeding between Exmoor, Dartmoor, New Forest, Galloway, Welsh, Connemara and the odd Highlands ponies. This hardworking animal which is adapted to survive on sparse vegetation and harsh weather, was integral to the survival of Newfoundlanders well into the middle of the 20th Century.

Blue Blood North American Varieties

 Still other equine immigrants to the New World became raw materials for breeding experiments both by European settlers and Native North American tribes. These horses are bred to suit human tastes and needs. Typically, they are taller and less stocky than breeds that are created by natural selection or intelligent selection that aims at an animal adapted to a harsh environment.

 The stately Tennessee walking horse is the product of human selection using Standardbreds, Morgans, Thoroughbreds, Canadian and Narrangansett Pacers. It is sleek looking, with a smooth gait that makes it an excellent riding horse.

The Missouri Fox Trotting Horse was also bred for its gait. The American Quarter Horse  is bred for its speed and sure footedness. Its roots go back to the days before the American Revolution, when colonists challenged each other to short races. A fast horse was a status symbol. The breed was refined in the Southwest by cowboys who further developed its sure-footedness and speed.

Native North Americans also bred horses that immigrants brought from Europe. Unlike European immigrants, they preferred shorter, stockier breeds that could travel rough terrain without horseshoes. For example, the Cayuse Indian Pony is short and stocky with high withers, a long canon bone, and a sloped pastern that makes it easy to ride without a saddle. It is descended from French Canadian horses Pawnee Indians purchased from voyageur traders. Looking for greater strength and speed, Native North American tribes bred these French Canadian horses with Spanish Barbs.

Intelligent Selection Can Be Whimsical

One interesting characteristic of intelligent selection is that breeders will sometimes emphasize a characteristic simply because they like it, although it is not in itself especially significant to the animal’s well-being or survival. For example, French Canadian horses often had spots or white markings on their coats. The Cayuse Indians prized these markings and preferred to breed marked horses. This trait has been passed on to breeds such as the Appaloosa, Paint and Pinto.

Horse Breeding and Specified Complexity

Design of Life author Bill Dembski uses the term “specified complexity” to signify the work of intelligent agents (see pp. 168ff). Intelligent agents produce effects that are not merely complex but specified for an apparent external purpose. Unintelligent causes do not produce these effects. Consider how this relates to horse breeding.

Natural selection eliminates traits that hinder an animal’s survival - and that’s all it can do. Human breeders also select among such traits. They may choose traits related to survival under difficult conditions, as we have seen, but they may also choose traits that are unrelated to simple survival. Those traits are sought for some other purpose.You could say that such breeds are complex and specified.

Intelligent agents can, of course, try to make the animal look as much like an ancient ancestor as possible (consider the Heck horses, for example). Intelligent causes can mimic unintelligent ones when they choose to do so. But unintelligent causes cannot mimic intelligent ones. An unintelligent cause will not just happen to produce specified complexity.

Here is a podcast with astronomer Guillermo Gonzalez, who is skeptical of the famous "Copernican Principle" in science.

The principle is named after early astronomer Copernicus, whose 1543 book proposed that the sun is the center of our solar system. It  suggests that, when making science decisions, we should assume that Earth is not an unusual planet and that its location is not unusual either.

Gonzalez and fellow astronomer Hugh Ross have pointed out,

Over the last four centuries the CP [Copernican Principle] has evolved from a simple claim that the Earth is not located at the center of the solar system to an expansive philosophical doctrine that the Earth, and particularly its inhabitants, are not special in any significant way.

It is worth noting that the Copernican principle is not testable. It is simply an assumption. If right, it will aid research, but if wrong, it will impede research.

Suppose it is wrong? Could that be one reason why the SETI search for extraterrestrial civilizations has not turned up any results for forty years, despite early optimism? Visit SETI and see for yourself.

Gonzalez's own research on planets that orbit stars other than our sun has documented that this claim, which was popularized by well-known astronomer Carl Sagan, is not correct. Earth is an unusual planet in an unusual location for exploring the galaxy.

Of course, there could be some space aliens out there. But if Gonzalez is right, we should expect that they are few and far between, and that is what we do see.

Gonzalez will appear in Ben Stein's Expelled movie, premiering in April, because he was denied tenure at Iowa State University last year, on account of his research direction. To look at some underlying issues, see Issues in science: The mind-body problem - why is it a problem?

Here is an interview with Gonzalez at Design of Life at which he talks about his findings and reactions to them. Here is the screenplay of his documentary, Privileged Planet, and here is a synopsis of the book of the same name that he wrote with philosopher Jay Richards.

Finally, a word about Copernicus ... Copernicus did not espouse the Copernican Principle himself. In fact, most of what you hear in popular media about him and his times are nonsense:

Myths and Facts About Copernicus and His Times*

Myth: In Copernicus’s time, most people believed that the earth was flat.

Fact: No educated person believed that the earth was flat. All schools in Copernicus’s day taught the ancient Greek view that the earth is a sphere. Nineteenth-century American writer Washington Irving gave legs to the story that medieval Europeans believed that the earth was flat.

Myth: Medieval philosophers thought that the earth was in the center of the universe because it was special.

Fact: Medieval philosophers thought that the earth was in the center of the universe because it was heavier than other planets, and was not really a “heavenly” body.

Myth: Copernicus’s sun-centered (heliocentric) theory was obviously simpler and more accurate than the old Ptolemaic (earth-centered) theory.

Fact: Copernicus’s theory, as he formulated it, was neither simpler nor more accurate than Ptolemy’s system. For one thing, he insisted that the planets’ orbits were circular. About a century after Copernicus’s death, Johannes Kepler (1571–1630) correctly identified the orbits as elliptical and straightened out other problems, which paved the way for the theory’s general acceptance.

Myth: Copernicus was persecuted by the Catholic Church, and therefore was reluctant to publish his theory.

Fact: Copernicus received a lot of support from the Catholic Church. When he was old and in failing health, Copernicus finally yielded to the wishes of high-ranking Catholic clergy and published his theory as a book. Partly because of the many myths that grew up around his theory, Copernicus’s name became attached to an idea that developed much later, that human beings were insignificant in the scheme of things.

*Adapted from By Design or by Chance? (Augsburg 2004), p. 24.

 

The mind-body problem is the fact that our minds are not physical entities. They are intimately linked with our brains and bodies, yet they are in no one particular place. Our bodies (including our brains) and our minds - sometimes calledd our consciousness - together make up our experience of ourselves.

Materialists (scientists who believe that the material world is all there is) try to solve the mind-body problem by arguing that the mind does not really exist. Although they cannot now disprove its existence, they are sure that they will eventually succeed. For now, we should accept their view on faith. They have faith that materialism is true and so should all thinking people, especially scientists.

That’s called promissory materialism*, after the idea of a promissory note (a promise to pay on a future date). Except that this particular promissory note is not dated.

The "hard problem" of consciousness

In a recent podcast with the Discovery Institute’s Center for Science and Culture, neurosurgeon Michael Egnor discussed the mind-body problem:

Dr. Egnor, professor of neurosurgery at SUNY, observes:

... materialism has not been able to answer the "hard problem of consciousness." Instead, ... it claims that materialism as a theory will eventually be able to explain what it has yet to explain at all.

So far, materialists have had very little luck with understanding consciousness, which is why it is called the “hard problem.”

In a materialist setting, consciousness must be explained as an illusion. But whose illusion? If there is an "I", a subject of the illusion - the conscious person whose illusion it is - the argument falls apart.

Evidence against materialism "unscientific" by definition? Why? 

Montreal neuroscientist Mario Beauregard and I talk about some of the other problems with promissory materialism in general in The Spiritual Brain:

... if we adopt it, we are accepting a promissory note on the future of materialism. Promissory materialism has been immensely influential in the sciences because any doubt about materialism—no matter what the state of the evidence—can be labeled “unscientific” in principle. (P. 24)

Essentially, materialists understand science as applied materialism. The purpose of science is to confirm materialism. So scientists find evidence that supports materialism. If not, they must just keep looking.

For example, when intelligent design theorist Michael Behe pointed out evidence against unguided Darwinian evolution in Darwin's Black Box, Richard Dawkins, a materialist, said Behe should just keep looking until he finds a materialist explanation. But Behe disagreed because the problems he was finding were fundamental, like the hard problem of consciousness. They signaled that something was wrong with the materialist approach.

What should scientists do if they find evidence that does not confirm materialism? There is quite a lot of that in neuroscience, including the hard problem of consciousness and the placebo effect.

(The placebo effect occurs when patients get better after taking a pill, even if the pill was only sugar. It demonstrates the active role of the mind in the management of our health.)

Under promissory materialism, scientists are expected to ignore or explain away evidence that doesn't support materialism.

In fact, materialist explanations are to be preferred to non-materialist ones even if they make less sense and account less well for the evidence. The idea is that some day scientists will come up with better materialist explanations.

Materialist efforts to account for spirituality, often take this approach, and The Spiritual Brain sets out many examples.

So when, exactly, does the promissory note cash?

The problem with promissory materialism is that, like any promissory note, its value depends on whether it will be repaid. And there is no date on the note. So if there is no materialist explanation for the mind decades from now, there is still no point at which we can say, "Let's look at other options."

For the materialist, who knows by faith that materialism is true, that is not possible. There are no other options. Science exists only to find evidence for materialism.

That is why materialists may accuse anyone who looks at other options, as Bill Dembski and Jonathan Wells do in The Design of Life, of being "anti-science."

What Dembski and Wells actually are is non-materialist. They are engaged in the currently controversial task of assembling the evidence for design and purpose in our universe that does not fitthe materialist worldview. This includes evidence from the study of the human mind-brain complex (see Chapter 1).

It is not surprising that many famous neuroscientists, including Wilder Penfield, John Eccles, and Charles Sherrington, have been non-materialists.

*The term promissory materialism was first coined by philosopher of science Karl Popper.

In a review of several books in the Saskatoon Star-Phoenix reviewer Ted Hainsworth devoted paragraphs to The Design of Life, describing it as:

... an apology for the concept of intelligent design and a rant against Darwin's theory of evolution. It too is a scientist's playground, where two biologists seek to give some popular context to the meaning of life, in much the same way Stephen Hawking tried to explain the universe in A Brief History of Time.

Interesting. Hawking's book makes a useful comparison in some ways and contrast in others.

As a fan of A Brief History I would say that it is in some ways a deeply ambivalent book. Hawking was clearly uncomfortable with the religious implications of the Big Bang and of the fine tuning of our universe for life. He is even willing to entertain ideas that he himself clearly considers unsatisfactory, such as the "no boundary" condition, as a possible way around the evidence. Dembski and Wells are, by contrast, quite comfortable with the evidence for design.

I am unclear what Hainsworth means by describing The Design of Life as a "rant against evolution" - it simply sets out the evidence for design in life forms that most students will not encounter in their textbooks and most adults will not encounter in popular science books.

The only time the authors become slightly impatient is when they evaluate the mess of contradictory theories around the origin of life - but they are in very good company there because almost everyone agrees that origin of life research is a mess.

Hainsworth's subsequent comments make clear he doesn't really think the book is a rant: "The Design of Life is worth a read because it fosters thought and discussion." I suspect that "rant against evolution" was a phrase he just had to get in there, even though he doesn't quite believe it.

At the opening of a thoughtful (and mainly, I think, sympathetic) review in AntiMatters, Ulrich Mohrhoff observes,

At the time of writing this, Amazon has 74 reviews of The Design of Life. Of these 35 rate five stars, one rates four stars, two rate three stars, and 36 rate one star. This leaves three reviewers worth checking out. One of them is David Springer, who remarks that "any book with such a high sales rank at Amazon that causes this much polarization in the reviews must be worth reading just to see for yourself what's in it that's causing so much controversy."

I assume that Mohrhoff refers here to the two three-star reviews and the one four-star review as worth checking out - because they are probably normal reviews, like his, as opposed to elements in a campaign for or against the book. One finds oneself wondering, given how quickly many of these reviews appear, whether the campaigners had in fact read the book.

 AntiMatters is a publication of the Sri Aurobindo International Centre for Education. Although the Centre seems to be project sympathetic to Hinduism, Mohrhoff notes in the review that he himself does not subscribe to any religion.

Actually, what makes The Design of Life so controversial is this: For many years, the evidence against the conventional story of evolution taught in textbooks and displayed in museums was simply not addressed. Those who insisted on addressing it were Expelled, as the Ben Stein documentary, to be released in April, explains.

Many scientists have a vested interest in public acceptance of the textbook story. As co-author Jonathan Wells shows in his controversial earlier book, Icons of Evolution, they knew about and admitted the problems with the textbook icons - but these problems were discussed only among specialists.

 Museum docents were trained to parry questions from the public.

But the longer we don't address a problem with evidence, the bigger and more painful it becomes. More and more people who question the evidence must be Expelled. Rules must be made to prevent discussion of the quality of the evidence.

Usually this does not work, because everyone who has heard about someone getting Expelled or knows about the rules against doubting the official story  KNOWS that something is wrong. So the establishment's efforts to suppress the controversy merely advertise the problem.

In this atmosphere, The Design of Life was bound to be controversial. It actually shouldn't be. It's a good book and well written, but the fact that it is even remotely controversial shows just how committed the science establishment is to ideas about evolution that do not conform to the current available evidence.

Some plant and animal hybrids survive environmental threats better than their purebred parents. Here's why:

Blight Resistant Hybrid May Save American Chestnut

Plant biologists have created a strain of American chestnut trees Fagaceae (Castanea dentata) resistant to blight. Scientist have introduced Chinese Chestnut (Castanea mollissima) genes into American Chestnut Trees. While the first generation of progeny is 50% Chinese Chestnut, subsequent breeding reduces the percentage of Chinese genes to 1/16. The result is not the original American Chestnut Tree, but a hybrid that is over 90% American chestnut.

It has taken the American Chestnut Foundation over 20 years to create this blight resistant strain. By 2010, there should be enough hybrid chestnuts to start planting tests in national forests. This new hybrid is welcome news for fans of the majestic American Chestnut.

Between 1904 and 1950, Chestnut Blight Fungus (Cryphonectria parasitica) originating from Japanese and Chinese chestnut trees in the New York Botanical Gardens and Bronx Zoo killed 3.5 billion American Chestnut trees. Centuries old forests were decimated. Stumps were all that remained of immense trunks, four feet across, and sky scraping foliage reaching 120 feet (36.5 metres.)

This achievement also illustrates an important fact: Plant hybrids often have genetic advantages over their parents.

Hybrid Finches More Viable Too

Hybridization creates viable offspring in the animal kingdom too.

Perhaps the most famous example of hybridization is seen in the so-called Darwin's finches of the Galapagos Islands and Cocus Island off the coast of South America.

These fourteen species differ from each other primarily in the shapes of their beaks and their mating rituals. They are thought to have descended from a common ancestor that arrived from the mainland of South America centuries ago. Darwin's finches have often been touted as evidence of Darwin’s theory of natural selection.

But there is evidence that these species are not becoming more distinct. In fact, they may actually be merging.

At least half of the finch species on the Galapagos Islands have been observed to produce hybrids. These hybrids thrive and reproduce even better than their parents.

Even purebred finches show evidence that they are not evolving as Darwin's theory predicts. During their extensive study of finches on the Island of Daphne Major in the Galapagos, biologists Peter and Rosemary Grant did observe changes in finch morphology.

After a drought in the 1970s, survivors had beaks that were on average 5% deeper than those of the birds that perished. It appeared that the finches were giving a live demonstration of Darwin's theory of natural selection.

But the performance was short-lived.

When wetter El Nino conditions returned in the 1980s, food supply increased, and the average depth of finch beaks returned to what existed prior to the drought. Peter Grant stated in 1991 that "the population, selected to natural selection, is oscillating back and forth." Not only are the species not showing any trend toward increasing differentiation, genetic sharing continues between species of Darwin's finches.

As Jonathan Wells, Senior Fellow at the Discovery Institute , writes in Icons of Evolution: Science or Myth?, "It remains a theoretical possibility that various species of Galapagos finches originated through natural selection. But the Grants’ observations provided no direct evidence of this. And in the course of their work, they discovered that several species of Darwin's finches may now be merging rather than diverging."

Hybrids With Genetic Advantages A Problem for Darwinian Theory

Darwin's theory of natural selection requires offspring to diverge from a common ancestor to create new species. It requires genetic differences to increase, as descendants adapt to their environmental niches.

It is this "natural selection" and "adaptation" that creates species over time. And, as the newly created species continue to adapt, they should become more different over time. Following this line of thought, hybrids should be less viable than their parents.

Not only is there evidence that natural selection oscillates over time, but some hybrids, in both plant and animal kingdoms, are better suited to their environments than their parents.

In the case of Darwin's finches, even the "purebred" finch populations show little tendency to sustain changes in size or shape of their beaks over the long term. This scenario is exactly what Darwinian theory doesn't predict.