Replacing Darwin: The New Origin of Species

welcome thank you for coming special welcome also to our web audience --is who will be listening in on what we're saying and watching what we're doing here today I want to discuss with you a controversial topic replacing Darwin controversial for reasons that I'll explore in a moment reasons that include the questions we'll ask and conclusions we'll reach so the first question I want to ask is what would it take to replace Darwin and by Darwin I don't mean the man himself I mean his ideas so one of his most controversial ideas is that all of life on this planet is related that you and I are related to one another but not just to one another that some of our cousins include the trees outside the bacteria in this room that you can't even see the chimpanzees the great apes on and on that's that's what Darwin says all of us is related and Darwin said these relationships arose not by God causing them to be so but by natural processes over millions of years that's the idea I'm talking about what would it take to replace that and the reason that's controversial I should say one of the reasons I know it's controversial is because reporters usually ask me a question when they find out that I'm a creationist and that I reject this idea they say well you know that 97% of the scientific community disagrees with you and those statistics are true if you look at what the Pew Forum has done over many years and surveyed both the general public and the scientific community the numbers are pretty stark well in the general public there tends to be a consistent pocket of creationists in the scientific community the numbers are very different ninety seven percent would say evolution is true so these reporters will say what do you do with that and they'll give me two options they say so if you're a creationist and you want people to believe that - does that mean we have to either throw out science entirely or say there's some sort of vast conspiracy that 97 out of 100 scientists are somehow hiding the key evidence so which of these two unpleasant unpalatable options will you pick and what pick your poison basically what do you think the answer is what what options are there I respond by saying well there's a third option there's more than a third after there's a fourth and fifth there are other ways to look at this question and it may surprise you to know that one of the options comes from perhaps not unlikely source this isn't the first time we've faced statistics that are this stark this isn't the first time in history where there's been a scientific consensus and a small group of people challenging it one of the most recent situations that mirrors this goes back to Darwin himself when Darwin came along he didn't come along and be a hero solving a scientific mystery that had been unsolved for centuries he came along and challenged the scientific consensus he said so himself in his book in the first edition that he published in 1859 his book on the origin of species he preemptively asked a question he knew his critics were gonna ask this question so he put it in print himself first Darwin said why it may be asked if all the most eminent living naturalist and geologists rejected this view of the mutability of species of the mutability is changed in 1859 a pre 1859 people viewed species as unchanging so Darwin says why have all the well-known scientists rejected what I have said and he asked that question so that he could answer it in his book and he gave four responses the first response was to review the evidence that he had just given in his book so this particular sentence I just showed you is in the closing chapter of his book the first response he gave was to say well let's review what I've just covered in the preceding chapters how could you think any different that was his first response the second response and these get really interesting for me particularly considering that Darwin lived in Victorian England he said let's consider the time scale of human psychology how long or slow does it take people to alter their view he said we are always slow in admitting any great change of which we do not see the intermediate steps and we all know this is to be true if there's a dominant idea that we hold to or that someone else holds to and then the opposite view comes along people don't quickly switch you have to create a clear bridge from here to here so that they can walk across and even if you can can he's in a series of steps so that they can see oh I was wrong I should be thinking this they're still slow in doing so just look at today's polarized political climate people aren't trying to talk and find bridges they're very entrenched they're very slow and changing their mind Darwin said the same thing held true back then so he's proposing something new people are gonna be slow to accept it his third response and this is perhaps the most entertaining to me is to consider the obstinacy of human psychology this is what Darwin said I by no means expect to convince experienced natural ists whose minds are stocked with the multitude of facts all viewed during a long course of years from a point of view directly opposite to mine in other words to put it in modern English some old dogs don't learn new tricks that's basically what he said and he got away with it there's some people are just not gonna change their mind he wasn't trying to convert them instead he said I look with confidence to the future too young and rising natural ists who will be able to view both sides of the question with impartiality that's what he said 1859 in response to those who said well you're challenging the consensus how can you do that the fourth response was to point out the contradictions in the opposing views and it appears that this four-part strategy was wildly successful and again his book bears out this fact this again is the 1859 quote from the first edition of his book by 1861 this sentence changed as he updated it he said why it may be asked have nearly all the most eminent living naturalist and geologist rejected his view so by two years later there was a buddy a crack developing in the signs of a consensus and ten years after the first edition the 1869 edition the sentence had changed to this Wyatt may be asked until recently have near didn't nearly all the most eminent living naturalist and geologist reject his view so in ten years Darwin flipped the signs of the consensus they totally rejected him in 1859 they embraced him in 1869 so could there be a good basis for challenging the scientific consensus today I think we can take a page from this strategy I would argue first of all and I'll go backwards through his his arguments for a reason I'll explain in a moment I would say able to ask contradictions now if you don't agree with that you don't have to take my word for it I'll just give that a different color on the screen as a proposition to be tested has human psychology changed in 150 years are people less obstinate today than they were back then my impression is humans are the same people are still very very unlikely to change their views they take a long time to think of something different that's helpful if we flapped in the breeze so to speak and went from one thing to another it it'd be very different existence that we have what I want to do and the time we have remaining is do what Darwin didn't is review the evidence now I haven't given you a book that we can review but there's been a hundred and fifty years since he wrote his book and I want to review what has happened so this will be a little bit of a history lesson some history perhaps that you haven't heard that I think give us good reason to revisit the question evolution good reason to confront the scientific community the 97% and say is it time to replace him so what I want to do is give you two reasons that I think we have to doubt Darwin and then at the end talk about why I think we can even go so far as to replace him so I want to talk about what species are Darwin wrote a book on the origin of species if we're gonna replace this we have to have something said about species I want to talk about what species are the history of species and then think deeply about their fundamental nature and along the way I think we'll discover some very profound reasons some very simple but very profound reasons why it's time to rethink this issue scientifically so what's a species I have this textbook speciation by Jerry Coyne and Alan or online desk very helpful textbook it's to evolutionists very helpful discussion of what species are why there are species and the latest research in that feel and this is many years old but still a helpful resource they list nine different definitions for species so from the outset this might seem like a complicated task unlike a long story short the good news is scientists like to get into nitty-gritty details and fight over that and these nine definitions aren't that dramatically different and more towards our purposes there's a story in this book that is really fast it it deals with the peoples of the Papua New Guinea islands in the Southeast Asia Thailand Australia that that sort of region there was a prominent evolutionist Ernst Mayr he's now deceased he was a PhD in ornithology he liked to study birds he went to these mountains in the Southeast Asian islands but Pune Guinea to study the birds of that region and so he went into formally a scientists do classify this is a bird species or here's another bird species and this group looks different from this group sort of another bird species he tallied then he catalogued them he came up with 137 bird species for that region now he went in as an explorer as a scientist to study what's there the native peoples of that region don't have the formal scientific training that Ernst Mayr did he was at the Harvard Museum for a while they aren't formally trained and this is what a species is and here's the scientific definition and here's the tools that you use to explore them instead they like all of us just notice the world around them we see I could probably you could probably tell me what are the native species wherever you live you're probably from many different states and you could tell me yeah this is what I've seen my backyard here's what comes to the bird feeder that just happens naturally well these peoples of Papua New Guinea in their own language observe the world around them and then gave names to what they saw so they observed the birds around them and you know that bird is red or yellow or has a different song than this bird over here and they'll give different names so Ernst Mayr PhD came up with a hundred and thirty seven species how many names do you think the native peoples had for the birds of their region any guesses 137 is close 136 so I suppose you could conclude that you don't need a PhD to do science you could also conclude and I think this is the more important conclusion right now for our purposes species are intuitively obvious what is a species it's something we all recognize we can see oh that's that's a creature that's different from from that creature and and and that's something different if if the native peoples can see enough differences where they apply different names species are intuitively obvious so to get to our two reasons to doubt when I want to make a series of observations and basically derive from understanding what species are and their history and their fundamental nature derive these reasons so the first observation species aren't it'll be obvious we're not dealing with a terribly complex topic it's something we can all recognize well what's the history and here is where I want to focus now on the history of the formal scientific term when we're discussing the Origin of Species in a scientific sense this question this debate only goes back a few hundred years humans have been naming what they see exploring what we see for as long as we've been on this planet but in in terms of the formal scientific sense when I use the term species as a scientist I'm using something that has a recent history it goes back to Carl Linnaeus the swedish biologist who was even even by evolutionist is considered the father of modern taxonomy the father of modern classification he began a catalog called Systema naturae and what she documented the species that he was aware of he updated this as he discovered more and more 1758 is the 10th edition many scientists view this as a landmark study sort of the beginning then of what we understand is the formal study of this concept now what I want to do is a little scientific experiment and to see and test whether what I just told you is true our species intuitively obvious so I'm gonna walk through some of the species on Linnaeus's list so we get a sense for what he knew versus what we now know today but I need you to help me and you need to tell me what the species are on the screen and tell me if these aren't indeed intuitively obvious so tell me what this species is zebra okay totally obvious good so far another thing Linnaeus gave us is what we call the binomial classification system the system where we give two names to every species so we humans in the formal scientific sense have a binomial name Homo sapiens Homo is the genus name species is sapiens is a species name and that holds true that's same the system for animals this moose has the genus name al seis species name El seis so we have a different genus and species name sometimes species have the same I'll say SEL seis back to our little experiment what species is this and then the formal scientific sense bison byeson and in the formal sense panthera leo okay keep going red fox specifically yes a little bit trickier this is a monkey it's specifically a barbary macaque these were all on Linnaeus's list and there's a reason I went through this kindergarten exercise because it has profound ramifications for our study so you could make a nice zoo with the mammals that Linnaeus knew of in 1758 in total so everything we just showed you I just showed you would be classified as mammals they suckle their young this characteristic we suckle our young among other characteristics classifies these species as mammals in total Linnaeus knew of less than 200 mammal species well what's the significance of that anyone want to guess how many mammal species in 2017 the scientific community recognizes how many today a lot that's a good answer over 5400 so that's a dramatic increase in just a few hundred years less than two hundred and seventeen fifty-eight 2017 several thousand so what changed what happened that we've had this explosion in biological knowledge one of the things that's changed since 1758 is scientists now lump domestic creatures horses donkeys so forth in the same category as wild species so domestic horses are now lumped in the wild horse species domestic donkeys in the wild donkey species okay that's one thing that's changed that actually reduces the number of species it doesn't increase it the way we've increased the number of species one of the ways is by discovering more versions of what we already knew more versions of zebras more versions of horses more versions of donkeys or asses here's the members of the family the horse zebra donkey family that I recognized today seven of them you can see across the top of the screen there are seven excuse me three zebra species on the bottom the three tan species the one in the far left is the press welt sqeeze horse that's the wild species it actually went extinct in the wild it's been reintroduced all the horses that you see on ranches and farms belong to that species they're domesticated there they are lumped into the wild one in the middle is the are they are the two Asian wild a species the key hang in the onager and on the right the one with stripes on its legs how many of you have seen a striped donkey before just a few it is a the African wild a species so it's in the Irit really Theo Pia region domestic donkeys are part of that species and just to make it clear that these are indeed different species I'll show you the differences among the various zebra species this is the plain zebra it has fairly broad stripes that are almost horizontal on its haunches notice as well if the stripes go all the way around its belly there's no stopping any gap this guy's looking at the camera so you can see its nose that's black and it transitions immediately into stripes on its face those features distinguish it from the mountain zebra notice that the stripes are thinner and denser there aren't as many of the horizontal broad stripes on its haunches and they don't reach all the way up the back the there's a there's a gridiron type pattern on its backside notice the stripes don't cross the belly there's that there's a white patch there you can you can kind of see on the side view of this guy's face that there's a black nose that transitions to brown and then to stripes you could see a better if you looking at the camera it's also got a dewlap on its neck this makes it different again from that plain zebra in this case the Imperial zebra species I think it's the prettiest notice that on its haunches it basically has no broad stripes they're all fairly dense there's this swirl pattern the stripes do not cross the belly doesn't have that dewlap the nose is black to brown and if you if it was looking at the camera you can see a patch of white so these are the features that distinguish the species I've shown you three individuals this is true of populations so when you find an imperial zebra it looks like this when you find a mountain zebra not all of them have the dewlap but they have that that pattern that the gridiron on their back they have the particular nose the striping pattern with the black and brown and stripes these are characteristic features that's what defines them we've discovered more of them since Linnaeus we've discovered more versions of species like elephants this is the Asian elephant it's got that characteristic skull shape it's got the smaller ears very different from the large ears of the African elephant skull shape is different giraffe many scientists still consider there to be only one species there's been debate recently based on genetics as to whether there's one or four but let's just say there's one it this giraffe species belongs to a family that includes one other species one that was not on Lana's list buts been discovered since then this particular species doesn't have a neck that's as long as a giraffe it is a mammal anyone guess what other species has been discovered and now placed in the giraffe family oh copy very good so this guy mahogany coat stripes on its back part of the same family as the giraffe now why would they be lumped the same now when I look at the giraffe I get pretty distracted by its long neck I don't typically notice those horns or in the technical scientific sense the ossicones on the top of its head the melo copy has those as well one of the features that includes it in this particular family why was the okapi not on a Linnaeus's list it exists today native only to the Democratic Republic of the Congo Zaire I mentioned that Linnaeus was a European a Swede when did Europeans first penetrate the African interior such that they could discover this creature David Livingstone was one of the pioneers early pioneers he wasn't born until 1813 so of course he has to grow up before he can make his trip 1813 is over 50 years after Linnaeus's 10th edition so history plays a role the globe as we know it today is really a recent discovery we take for granted how much we know about the globe and the various continents and the species on it not so well-known in 1758 history plays a role in the absence of other types of mammals like kangaroos marsupials those that have creatures in the pouch why are marsupials absent well Australia at least the Australian marsupials weren't discovered by Europeans James Cook namely until 1770 so no kangaroos no wombats no sugar gliders no koalas all these various marsupial species native to these regions no no Tasmanian devils absent from Linnaeus's list because he doesn't even know Australia exists other types of mammals that lay eggs include the platypus and the Echidna even though it looks like a porcupine very different reproductive system so all of these were missing from Linnaeus's list for now we can recognize his obvious historical reasons but the discovery of Australia only modestly increases the number of species 250 species added to the list with that discovery that doesn't get us anywhere close to 5,400 so how did we go from less than 200 to over 5,400 today and what is it what does this have to do with Darwin the major contributors to the large number of mammal species that we know today are really due to only a few categories shrews moulds bats rodents like rats and mice and you can understand why these guys would have been missing from Linnaeus's list if there's an elephant roaming around the world we recognize it pretty quick cuz it's big and large and it's hard to miss giraffes is hard to miss how many of us easily miss how many of us wish we would miss the mice that are screwing around the floor outside these sorts of rodents they're small hard to identify and so you're trying to map out all the species that exist in a region it takes a fair amount of effort to cover every plot of ground with these guys might be or in case of bats looking for the trees the air so forth these guys alone contribute over 3700 species so as you go to sleep tonight you can think about the fact that there's over 3,700 species of mice and rats and bats roaming this globe looking to terrorize us so 1758 less than 200 species today over 5,400 what does this have to do with Darwin well I just gave you a timeline 17:58 2017 that's a huge increase Darwin falls somewhere in here but let's just document here our second observation number of species has grown dramatically Darwin is 1858 just 100 years after Linnaeus and he knew of less than 1,800 mammal species that's only a third of what we know today okay knowledge is increased what's the big deal I've used mammals as a representative example but in terms of all the species that exists on the planet mammals are a tiny fraction I didn't even tell you about plant species like this giant sequoia or fungal species like this pink oyster mushroom mammals are a category of a larger inclusive group we call vertebrates we have a backbone so we're vertebrates classified as vertebrates there's all sorts of animals that are invertebrates like this mollusk this giant clam octopi are also classified as mollusk same categories shellfish surprisingly blue blue ringed octopus in the oceans there are vertebrates some of which have bony skeletons some of which have cartilaginous skeletons like sharks and rays in this case this is a manta ray bony skill bony skeletons include vertebrates include this pufferfish on the land there's mammals that are vertebrates there's amphibians that are vertebrates this is not a reptile it's not a worm it's a Sicilian same group of creatures as frogs and salamanders not a well-known species birds obviously vertebrates they're familiar in vertebrates like the honeybee anyone know how many species in total plants animals fungi bacteria the whole nine yards how many species in total des scientists recognized today 2017 a lot that's a good answer 150,000 it's getting closer 1.6 million over 1.6 million so there's a tremendous diversity of life we're thinking about origins what did Darwin know in 1859 here's a graph the grey line represents how the number of species that we recognize formally has grown with time the horizontal axis is a time line the vertical axis is the number of species so you can see as that gray line goes up the number of species increases with time Darwin's year 1859 shows up right there you can see very little was known this is a paper from 2011 so that you select the different methodologies than what I just discussed and it's a few years ago so there aren't they are not up to 1.6 million but there's a lot of species there notice that there's a big gap between the yellow line at the orange line and the blue line that's how much our knowledge has grown in 150 years by my estimates Darwin knew of less than 15% of what we know today so think about that Darwin's running a book that many consider the Bible on the Origin of Species but his subject matter species he knows less than 15% and we can make that even stronger see how this line this line goes up this paper estimated that the number of known species actually alive on the planet because that line suggests we're going to keep discovering them it's probably closer to ten million in other words we today 2017 we probably know of less than 20% of what actually exists which means Darwin knows of an even even smaller fraction so Darwin's writing a book on species yet he is unaware of the existence of over 85% of them should we trust his conclusions Darwyn worked with the data that he had we work with the data that we have today would it be reasonable to call it case closed let's say we're different dealing with a different historical question out the Origin of Species but let's say JFK's assassination I lived in Dallas for six years I've been to the museum's this is a question near and dear to my heart let's say I came to you and I said I've got the explanation for who shot JFK and the answer is not Lee Harvey Oswald you might say well ok you can think whatever you want to what's your evidence and I say well I only looked at 15% you might say well talk to me when you finish finish your investigation you might come to me and say let's let's reverse roles you might come to me and say well Lee Harvey Oswald shot JFK this is settled science the Warren Commission solved this in 1964 and then I came back to you I said well did you know that the Warren Commission had only 15% of the evidence you might rethink it should we rethink it when the question is the Origin of Species and the numbers are the same that's my first reason the first reason I think we have good grounds for revisiting this issue and seeing if what Darwin thought then still holds true today we have much more evidence so that's the history of species I want to take a little bit more deeply now into what species actually are and how Darwin was able to overturn the sign of a consensus so let's go back not to Darwin but to 1758 here's his species but Linnaeus was aware of this was on his list this is the arctic fox what's the first thing you notice about this particular species bright white fur coat so this is very helpful to our eyes camouflage is it against the snowy white arctic environment that thick coat insulates it against the frigid cold we now know of other species that have these same characteristics that help but survive thrive in this Arctic environment the polar bear documented 1774 has a white coat helps it blend in insulation and it's not just predators but also prey that have these features the arctic hare 1819 has bright you know bright white coat helps it blend in and insulates it in this frigid environment so let's say your Linnaeus you take a trip to the Arctic you're aware of the arctic fox you want to go around the globe and document what you see so you start up north and the only way you can go from north is south so you start looking for foxes bears hares rabbits elsewhere and let's say you go from the Arctic down to Europe and Asia you'll find foxes but not arctic foxes you'll find red foxes what purpose might this red coat serve and to help you answer this question how many red foxes do you see in this diagram someone said well you there's a reflection there there's a fox looking up the one obvious that's just a reflection not a second individual right there there's two there's another one up here but you have to look carefully what's the point the point is this coat seems to help camouflage in this particular environment so that's Europe and Asia let's say you go back to the Arctic you want to look for bears and you go south but this time to North America you'll find bears not polar bears but black bears how many black bears do you see in this particular image it's really kind of a trick question because I only see one I just wanted to see if you could find something else but it helps blend in much better than if it had a white coat if you keep going south you're looking for rabbits you go to the deserts you'll find Jack rabbits what's the first thing you notice about this particular Jackrabbit species big old ears so this guy has a challenge of extreme temperature but the opposite extreme that the arctic hare faced so not extreme cold extreme heat this guy has to stay cool and get rid of its body heat in the way it does that one of the ways it does that is these large ears through which there's a lot of circulation helps radiate out this body he'd stay cool so wherever you go you find species that seemed to fit their environments Linnaeus could have made these observations now let me ask you a question let's say biotechnology advanced to such an extent that we could now design species from scratch I go to you and I say I want to foxes I want you to design for me two foxes one's got to thrive in the Arctic one's got to thrive in a more temperate climate how would you design it and would you design it much different from what you see here would you design an arctic fox with a red coat a blue coat I don't think you design it much different what you see here it seems like these guys were designed for the environments in which they exist same is true of the bear its name is true the rabbit's we've looked at some extreme environments even in less extreme environments like the tropics of Africa the tropical savanna zebras exist scientists debate precisely what these stripes do but to our eyes again it seems to serve some protective camouflage effect wherever you go around the globe Europe North America Africa Asia you find species that seem to fit their environments as if they were designed by some master designer for that environment that was the dominant idea that was the scientific consensus of the days before Darwin wrote his book so how could Darwin overturn this idea when Darwin said yes I know that everyone disagrees with me all the most eminent biologist naturalist reject what I say what's the evidence that he's reviewing not only did the number of species increase 1758 1859 but the knowledge fields of science to knowledge in those fields of science increased the world expanded David Livingstone penetrates Africa we know more about the globe they discover Australia Darwin says well let's think about the new geographical data that we possess this is the type of argument he would have made so I've shown here one of the three zebra species but I'm showing in red the geographic locations of all three zebra species they're indigenous native only to Africa from South Africa up to near Ethiopia that's where you find them in the wild today and only there and they seemed to fit they seem to be designed for this tropical savanna environment that sort of thing where they can blend in Darwin comes along and says ok I'll concede that point they do look like they're designed for that environment but Africa is not the only location where we find these tropical savannas you can find them and I've shown them here on the screen with red stars in northern India on the border with Nepal you can find them in northern Australia you can find them in Brazil you can find more temperate grasslands in the United States go to the Great Plains go to Nebraska we're gonna go to Kansas you won't find zebras there you won't find zebras nay to Brazil or to Asia or to Australia that was Darwin's question then why if zebras were designed for Africa for that I should say if zebras were designed for the savanna why don't you find them in every place you find a savanna if the designer took such great pains to make them for this environment why didn't he put them in every instance of that environment that was Darwin's challenge that was one of the fields of science that he drew on geography biogeography another field was anatomy physiology so if you were to take your forearm strip away the skin and hair and and muscle and nerves and blood all the way down to the bone it looks something like this on the left and it's been color-coded so that you can see the order of the bones one in Antan yeah two bones in red and white and then in the wrists yet you have the in yellow bones and then the fingers and it's color-coded for a reason the four limbs of the other the other species that are shown you on the screen there are four limbs are a dog bird and whale they also have one two wrist bones fingers but obviously very different the whale bone is much shorter obviously that the bird fingers are much different than our fingers there's obvious differences and Darwin would have said yes there's obvious differences in what you see here but there's an underlying shared pattern one two wrists fingers in every case the human dog bird will same pattern one two wrists fingers and evolutionists make this argument to this day and they say if you were designing a four limb from scratch there's a thousand different ways you could do it why is it that when we look to biology we find this one pattern or a small set of patterns Darwin said the only explanation must be these guys inherited this pattern from a common ancestor that had the one two wrists fingers pattern so he drew on that field he drew on the field of embryology here's a diagram that's actually in the book I've published it's not one of arns tackles fake diagrams of embryological development this is try to make it as close as possible to reality these are five very different species from left to right turtle frog Mouse chicken zebrafish and I've shown you different developmental stages so the bottom row represents the early probably shortly post conception stage in these various species the middle row is a later stage a middle stage I should say the Ferengi low stage and the late stage is up top and by the late stage it becomes fairly obvious what's what no one's going to confuse which one's the turtle and which one's something else you can already see in the chicken the beak forming the the early wings forming the mouse embryo the late stage in the middle looks like a mouse the frog tadpole stage is apparent consider zebrafish stage so there's differences the late differences early the fringle er stage is where there's a question so look at that first column on the left the turtle column compare it to the chicken column the fring Gillis stage in particular that middle row they're almost identical it's very hard to distinguish them if I showed you these two and you didn't know anything about what was going on I just identify what species this is I'd have trouble doing it Darwin would have asked why is that why is there similarly you can design the developmental program any which way you want to why is there this similarity must be due to common ancestry that all of life is connected they have inherited things from these ancestors another field of science embryology fourth field of science paleontology fossils Darwin recognized this as a problem in his day said well I hope we'll find these transitional forms creatures that blend the features of two very different species today evolutionists would say well we found them this is Tiktaalik published 2005 2006 it seems to blend the features of fish and land species it got has scales like a fish a head like a amphibian or a reptile and limbs that look like half fins half legs seems like the perfect connection between oceanic creatures and land creatures as if life evolved from the oceans onto the land that's what Darwin would have said had he had this evidence available to him so there's history bringing up to 1859 how Darwin was able to overturn the scientific consensus of his day that's some of the evidence he would have reviewed in his book that he was used to try to persuade his readers and his conclusion was case closed and it's been the conclusion the scientific community for the last hundred 50 years and remains that conclusion 97% of them would say that settles it I wanted to think more deeply about species is what I said and to do so I wanted to give you that background so that you could see what Darwin used and what he didn't so there's a field of science a critical field of science that's missing from this list and I want to explore that and we're gonna do that by going back to what we just discussed the idea that species are intuitively obvious we recognize species like that you'll pass the test we did earlier you said I showed you this and you said zebra well let's think deeply about this why when I show you this image do you immediately say zebra what is it about this guy that immediately tells you this is zebra stripes obviously I show you this image you immediately say giraffe and why do you say giraffe longneck characteristic feature I owe you this you say elephant because trunk large size the ears and you can immediately distinguish Asian from African because basically its features I show you this image you say Jaguar because why spots or rosettes that's at least what I read at the Fort Worth Zoo I'm not sure the male Jaguars appreciate those being called rosettes but so they're named I show you this image you say tiger because stripes species are defined by their traits that's how we recognize them that's that's why it's intuitively obvious they have these features that are characteristic now there's something about these traits that we've taken for granted in this entire discussion what defines those traits well those traits are inherited consistently from generation to generation zebras produced more zebras and it's species-specific Plains zebras produce Plains zebras not mountain zebras or Imperial zebras African elephants produce not just more elephants but more African elephants not Asian elephants so species are defined by those traits traits are defined by inheritance and they have to be otherwise we wouldn't even have this discussion if an elephant and one generation could give birth to a spider and then in the next generation that spider gave birth to a snake and the next generation that snake birth to a fish and then to an insect and there was massive change every generation we wouldn't be even be having this discussion we wouldn't have the term species in our dictionaries because those traits are defined by inheritance that are consistent from generation generation we can have this discussion and are having this discussion so I'm trying to connect some dots here as we think about what species actually are they're defined by traits but traits are defined by inheritance well what defines inheritance and how what Darwin have answered that question in 1859 he would have come to me and said I've got the answer for the origin the tiger species okay tell me Darwin what is the origin of the orange fur and the stripes well inheritance well tell me Darwin what about inheritance tells you that it's gonna be a tiger and that it's gonna show up in this particular species and not in this species how do you answer those questions how could he have answered those questions why don't we try to answer those questions here's the tiger it's got traits that define it those traits are defined by inheritance are there any other species that have orangish reddish hair there might be some in this room that have orangish reddish hair humans also have it and there's a set of traits that typically are accompanied that by this so who typically has red hair pale skin freckles there's a set of features that defines redheads some might say temper but there are features that define redheads and it's what's interesting is it's not just europeans that have natural red hair now I'm not referring to people who die their hair red I'm saying natural red hair there are central Asians who have natural red hair this is a child from Western China near Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan natural red hair so we're trying to understand the origin of traits the origin that tiger is red hair humans red hair yet there's a global distribution that maybe doesn't make immediate sense when you look at it if we keep going further east you will find natural red hair in the peoples of Papua New Guinea that individual on the left natural red hair and look on the right individual natural blonde hair if you didn't have their hair color you might say well they look kinda like to have African features yet red hair blonde hair where did that come from what defines who has certain Treacher's and features traits and who doesn't and you have to be able to answer that question to be able answer the question of the origin of these species well that's a global distribution let's focus in on just individual families to see if we can even explain that so there's some families where one parent has red hair and the other parent doesn't so in this case I'm showing you a family dad has dark hair and mom has red hair and every single one of her daughters has red hair as well why is that can we predict when children have red hair and when they don't there are families where dad has dark hair mom has red hair and none of the children have red hair why is that how do you explain that what predicts who gets red hair and who doesn't does it just appear and disappear at random could it be other colors that eventually appear could humans eventually have blue hair that's a legitimate question without the knowledge of inheritance I've talked about hair color we can talk about hair quantity is there a time do we know what defines a lot of hair or a little here could we eventually have a lot of hair did our ancestors have a lot of hair that's a real question when we're talking about evolution because they would say that our ancestors did at least those with whom we share a close genealogical relationship Tigers humans have red hair we already looked at the species that has red hair as well another one Fox's red foxes orangutangs have red hair what defines one red hair shows up and when it doesn't if orangutangs and humans have red hair does that mean we have a common ancestor when does red hair show up when does it not and why there's a lot of puzzles and paradoxes when you start thinking more deeply about inheritance now that we have microscopes those paradoxes increase so I'm going to show you this is a 10-day old embryo and I want you to tell me what species that embryo belongs to any guesses some ones that any of them that's a good guess and any brave souls want to say I know what that is or take it shot in the dark at it there's this isn't a test where you get a reward or a punishment just any guesses fish okay that's a good guess whale okay turtle okay all good guesses let me give you some days later another image of this embryo this is a 30 day old embryo does this change your opinion slightly humans see oh okay frog answers all over the map now I'm going to show you day 65 and you'll probably have a good guess by this point so you can see the hooves the head the tail zoom in that's day 85 now if I showed you the image at birth there'd be no debate it's a horse embryo so at birth by and large species are immediately recognizable I show you a zebra at birth and immediately it's a zebra no questions so species are defined by traits but all those traits that define us that define zebras that define horses get completely erased at conception and rebuilt every generation so we want to know the origin of red hair that's what we're discussing there are really much bigger questions that have to be answered we're trying to figure out why does red hair show up and not well everything that defines our features gets erased and rebuilt every generation so species are defined by traits traits by inheritance and inheritance is a whole bunch of paradoxes back to Darwin what did he know those paradoxes were not resolved the first steps towards resolving those paradoxes were not taken until a few years after Darwin published his work 1865 1866 is where most genetics textbooks begin Gregor Mendel's experiments not with human family trees but with a common household garden plant pea plant like today back then Mendel could have obtained pure breeding plants farmers will use peas it will harvest peas farmers want crops that produce sistent outcome every generation my grandfather was a strawberry farmer they were delicious strawberries I can tell you especially with sugar after dinner and his customers greatly appreciated his strawberries now strawberries are a seasonal crop which means you can only sell them certain times the year well he's got to make money the whole year so he'll what he did an offseason at least the German offseason was to purchase strawberries from elsewhere and sell them and that didn't always go so well it didn't go over so well with his customers these aren't your strawberries and there was a difference there was a bland or taste he had a particular strain that just had a delicious flavor farmers want pure breeding crops so that was true back then that's true today Mendel could have obtained pure breeding pea plants those that gave a consistent outcome in this case we're looking at the color of the peas he could get pure breeding yellow peas pure breeding pure breeding green seeded pea plants so if you just keep self-fertilizing them same outcome same outcome if you cross them which is what Mendel did he did hundreds of crosses counted thousands of peas he discovered something very interesting so doing that experiment yellow with green all of the offspring the f1 generation first filial generation were yellow no mix of the - no green whatsoever not yellowish green just yellow so this was his first observation first conclusion Mendel concluded that there must be that inheritance inheritance must be defined by unit factors that's the term he came up with what other term is there there's something that's quantifiable something that's distinct and discrete it's not yellowish green it's either yellow or green and when you cross him only yellow there's something there's some factor that encodes that that doesn't answer all of our questions though you immediately see and begin if you look at this result you say well what happened to green did it get destroyed if that green pea plant was the last living green plant on the planet did he just make it go extinct well he self fertilized the f1 generation and was able to recover green and so this was his second inference Green wasn't destroyed it was hidden these unit factors whatever they are the genetic information ever defines inheritance can be hidden in this case yellow was dominant when yellow and green are crossed green is still present in those offspring it's just hidden when green and yellow occur together yellow dominates green green is recessive and this occurred in very specific mathematical ratios when he self fertilized those F ones one-fourth of the time 25% the offspring were green three-fourths 75% were yellow in the f2 generation what does that mean he took this experiment one step further he took those f2 plants cell fertilized them and I've got lines going down the screen that so you can follows the next slide the outcomes I've got this large diamond with the individual diamonds in there so you can see them follow the green when he cell fertilized those those behaved as if they were a pure breeding green always green next generation always green always green the yellow ones came in a couple different varieties look at the blue shaded diamonds follow that yellow pea plant when he self fertilized one-third of his f2 yellow plants they acted like pure breeding yellow only only yellow 2/3 the peach shaded boxes gave rise to that same f2 result three-to-one ratio without going as the details of the math what Mendel and fir it the only way could make sense of these results was to postulate that the unit factors for yellow and for green where there was dominance and recessive they must have segregated from one another there were other experiments that Mendel did for our purposes this explains why red hair behaves in the manner that it does red hair is a recessive trait it's encoded by recessive unit factors so the only way it shows up is if both unit factors in a particular individual in this case mom say red and mom is gonna pass on one unit factor to offspring dad is gonna pass on another if dad has no red unit factors none of the offspring will have red hair red will be silent it'll be hidden just like Green was in the f1 generation in the family where mom had red hair and every single one of her daughters had red hair dad must have had a unit factor for red well his hair wasn't red that's because it was in hidden form dad must have had something that says non red and this is gonna dominate read and so he passes on that read to his offspring mom is always gonna pass on only read and hence the redheaded daughters those were the first steps taken towards understanding what defines inheritance and it was taken after Darwin Mendel's Mendel's results were lost then for several decades rediscovered around the turn of the century i'ma zoom to the sister really fast scientists began to look at sperm and egg these cells that define inheritance that's what gets passed on they connected Mendel's principles to structures in these cells chromosomes we have chromosomes in ourselves 46 it and this is an actual image of it 23 pairs this is what encodes then this is what the scientists concluded then this is what defines red hair ten fingers a head ten toes two legs so forth this is where the tiger stripes are encoded in the tiger chromosomes that was only a partial answer though to this question because chemically chromosomes are made of two major chemical molecules DNA and protein the DNA has shown that twisted ladder-like structure the proteins are showed by those yellow yellowish plugs and for many years scientists thought it was proteins not DNA that were the substance of heredity it took many decades for this debate to be resolved it wasn't resolved until Watson and Crick in 1953 and among others discovered the structure of DNA that I just told you about this was unknown before then they solved it and it was at that point that the scientific community finally settled on and resolved this question yes its DNA DNA must be where in in some coded form because this is a chemical not a book of English instructions there must be something that says red hair tiger stripes orangutan fur so forth orangutan hair that's this is where it's encoded this is also not the end of the story because once you settle on DNA is the substance of heredity now the question is well what is it what is the code in us that says human what is the code in that ten day old horse embryo that says you're gonna take this sphere and sculpt four legs and a tail and a head that looks like a horse and eventually the coat color and so forth what is it about DNA that doesn't it chance question you've got to get the actual sequence so that began a new long study and again I'm zooming through this history fast you can see this timeline here on the horizontal axis the first time point is Darwin 1859 1953 is the structure of DNA nearly 100 years after Darwin publishes his work DNA is recognized as the substance of heredity late 60s the first DNA sequences were solved from viruses by and large because they have the smallest DNA sequences the easiest technology drive science it wasn't until 1997 that these databases finally passed the 1 million mark that doesn't mean we have the DNA sequence from all 1.6 million species far from it what it means is we have a few select creatures if you select species with a lot of sequences so humans have tens of thousands of DNA sequences in our public databases ecoli as countless so we're still trying to get the DNA sequences from the creatures around the globe my point is using 1997 as the landmark for most of the last 150 years highlighted in red we've had no genetic information species are defined by traits traits are defined by inheritance its DNA that defines inheritance you want to know the Origin of Species you've got to know the origin of the DNA that defines them Darwin couldn't do it no one could do it until now Darwin took a massive scientific risk and he admitted as much chapter 5 the summary section of his book says our ignorance of the laws of variation is profound a critic might say well he doesn't use the term genetics true that's because the term genetics wasn't invented until the early 1900s that's how primitive the knowledge of genetics was in 1859 what I've just told you isn't necessarily a bombshell it has bombshell implications for the origins debate but the evolutionists have basically conceded what I've just said Dennis venema is an evolutionist who wrote a book atom in the genome to argue against the idea that Adam and Eve actually existed he used genetic data he made this statement in his book page 41 Darwin like all biologists of his day saved Gregor Mendel who was working in isolation and essentially unknown these are all things we just looked at Darwin was confused about how her he worked genetics DNA sequencing and comparing whole genomes genomes is just the totality of the DNA sequence our genome is the entirety of the instructions for 10 fingers 10 toes so forth comparing the entirety of instructions between species have thus been a great boon to evolutionary science that's venemous conclusion but they have also been potentially a great threat evolution as a theory could have been completely upended by the scientific advances venema would say but of course they haven't this is the sentence I want you to see them so if evolution could have been completely upended by genetics what does that say about the fossil record and the data that Darwin had from geography and from Aneta and physiology and from embryology if you were looking at the way this issue has been presented it seems to have been presented like settled science 450 years and there was no overturning it yet this quote says there was a big looming risk hanging and waiting to be resolved with the advent of modern genetics so species are defined by traits traits defined by inheritance inheritance is a whole bunch of paradoxes that weren't solved until long after Darwin and some of them are still being worked on you want to know the origin of the human species and of red hair DNA is where the answer lies you wonder the origin the tiger species DNA is where the answer lies the answer the children's question how did the zebra get stripes the answer is found in DNA species are defined by traits traits by inheritance and it's DNA that defines inheritance a concept that wasn't recognized until long after Darwin died so why would Darwin write a book On the Origin of Species long before anyone would have the direct data to answer that think about it if we knew nothing about Anatomy nothing about cadavers let's say no one had ever cracked open a dead person's body to look at what's inside could we have an intelligent discussion of the digestive system of the immune system of the nervous system of how muscles work I don't think so you really have to go way back in time to think what no one ever opened up kid that's basically what I'm saying how could you answer any questions about our physiology without actually opening a body how could we have an intelligent discussion about ecoli about microbes before the invention of the microscope could we talk about it in any intelligent way can we talk about the Origin of Species without any genetic datum that's the challenge so I've given you two reasons why I think it's time to doubt Darwin he knew less than 15% of his subject matter that's just the way science wasn't that day today we probably know less than 20% of what's out there and he tried to answer a fundamental of genetic question without any genetic data so what I've just said is reasons to say let's look at this question again I haven't given you reasons necessarily to replace Darwin we can't do that in 60 minutes I've written a book though that I think gets into much more detail so I've told you that the evolutionists can see that yes this is fundamentally a genetic question why aren't the 97% being converted that's what I deal with in part two part one I've basically given you the introduction of this book in part 1 part 2 deals with what was it about geography anatomy embryology paleontology that made Darwin so successful well I was able to convert the sign of humanity in ten years and have that last for a century and a half and what does it mean today the short answer I give is it's no longer relevant because his opposition has changed that's the short answer part three is really the heart of the book which is now that we know genetics is the most important field now that part to Darwin's data are no longer relevant because the opposition has changed creationism has matured what does genetics actually say about the Origin of Species and one of the shocking findings is genetics doesn't just tell us who's related to whom genetics tells us when species arose there is a clock in us there's a clock in species around the globe that says that that ticks off time since species arose and I argue in the book that there's evidence from genetics and actually even evidence from Darwin's own data that species arose recently that is a bombshell conclusion I've got an afterword that deals with some larger philosophical religious questions because the same surveys that saying 97% of scientists accept evolution have also surveyed their religious beliefs in at least 60% don't believe in God so there are larger questions at play this is 10 chapters of science and you really can't escape the afterword now I wrote this book in terms of its technical level really for more of a high school college student I expect PhD colleagues to read my published papers but I've got 30 pages of detailed references because this book has to be able withstand criticism and I put it there mainly for the purpose of the critics without trying to bog down the text and nitty-gritty detail so this book is really written for anyone who thinks that evolution rejects what Genesis says who agrees with a 97% I lay out reasons why hey I think it's time to rethink this issue look at the history of the last hundred fifty years look at the advance of science I think anyone should say this should at least deserves let's stop and rethink this and the rest of the book goes through here's why I think not only should we reject what Darwin said but there's a new model that totally replaces it that's a that's a controversial thesis my appeal to anyone who disagrees with it is give me a chance take a look through this book I've written it not as a sermon I've got colleagues for my graduate days I'm sending the book - and we tease back and forth and I said there better be some science they're not just Bible verses it's it's ten chapters of science it's not to belittle anyone it's to walk through the data and say let's see what this actually says you can get the book here in our bookstore for a web audience it's on Amazon Barnes Noble you can get a Kindle version through the Arg web store and there should be a link then on the web web stream here to the AIG web store that has both the hardcover and the e-book I've also created a Facebook page for this book because my goal is to provoke discussion this is again this isn't discernment to be people over the head this is at times say let's rethink this and this will provoke a lot of questions for many people especially the scientific community and I wanted to create a space where we could have this I'm inviting criticism and I've got a Facebook page so that this can be critiqued people can ask questions we can dialogue about things that have missed science is a work in progress it always is a work in progress it was a work in progress in Darwin's day 2017 it's no different so why can't we have a discussion thank you so much for your attention thank you to the web audience for their attention I hope you all have a great rest of your day thank you everyone dr. Jansen will be out in the lobby he can answer any of your questions so please gather up all your its possessions and exit to your left there will be some tracks out there by the door that you can pick up as you go thank you for being here

Channel: Answers in Genesis

Views: 70,903

Rating: 4.630137 out of 5

Keywords: Darwin, Origin of Species, evolution, science, scientific discoveries

Id: WjZZXxaEhpY

Length: 62min 23sec (3743 seconds)

Published: Fri Oct 13 2017