Paul Nelson isn’t happy that I explained that W. Ford Doolittle is not denying common descent when he says there was a large and diverse pool of organisms swapping genes at the base of the tree of life, and he presents a very revealing counter-argument:

Before I respond to PZ’s baseless charge, let’s see what mental image the following proposition generates:

All organisms on Earth have descended from a single common ancestor.

I’ll bet “single common ancestor” caused you to picture a discrete cell. And if you opened a college biology textbook, to the diagram depicting Darwin’s Tree of Life, you’d find that same image.

Maybe among Nelson’s clique, they imagine a single cell; I don’t know of any biologists who would, though. Do they also imagine a single pair of humans giving rising to the modern population, too?

Lineages do not have descent through single individuals or pairs in any evolutionary explanation. It’s always populations. Humans arose as descendants of a group of our ancestors who also apparently maintained a loose and slowly weakening genetic contact with the root stock and closely related primates — there was a gradual separation of the lineage over time and embodied in many individuals. The rise of life in general was even less tidily bounded in the absence of strong isolating mechanisms — the little buggers were promiscuously sloshing genes back and forth among all kinds of cells.

I’m afraid that all Nelson has accomplished with his complaint was to reveal yet again how naive and simplistic the creationist view of biology is. And we already knew that … there’s nothing new there at all.

Oh, and do take a look at Nick Matzke’s mocking of his claim about textbooks. He seems to think the bars on a cladogram represents single, discrete individuals? I think Nelson has just flunked Evolutionary Biology 101.

Recall those threats made against evolutionary biologists at the University of Colorado at Boulder? You can read the text of some of them at the Panda’s Thumb now. This is clearly the work of a deranged Christian cultist and creationist kook. We at the Panda’s Thumb also know who the author was, since he didn’t conceal his identity in the letters, and have tracked down his website, and yeah, he’s one of those wacky creationists and a fervent convert to Christianity from Judaism (we are not linking to that information until the police or other sources confirm it).

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I got a request from Alonzo Fyfe for any written material to counter Intelligent Design creationism that is geared for the younger set, 12-14 years old. I figure there are enough people reading this that some might have suggestions.

Along the same lines, I’ve long thought that a collection of little pamphlets written for people with short attention spans and no background would be useful tools for both promoting biology and atheism — anyone heard of such things? Or are we all long-winded, pretentious babblers?

Aww, the creationists are criticizing me. It would be so darned hurtful if they actually had valid complaints, but as usual, it’s all half-truths, misrepresentation, and selective quoting … and projection. It’s amusing how their complaints are more accurately reflected back at them.

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A scientist, Charles L. Rulon, debated an ID creationist, and here are the opening remarks he gave to justify joining in the debate. He first gave a list of reasons to not debate, which I’ll summarize in my own words here:

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Be careful, Nathan Zamprogno. The background research behind compiling a list of all the insane things Kent Hovind believes can be very hazardous to your mental health.

Reading the list can be very entertaining, though, so thank you for the sacrifice of some of your psychological stability.

Eamon Knight finds an irritating debate (you can listen to the podcast) between a real evolutionary biologist, Jerry Coyne, and a theologian and a philosopher, and … Paul Nelson of the Discovery Institute. The first three are all pro-evolution (although I found the theologian to be annoyingly apologetic for religion, naturally enough; Denis Lamoureux is a weird and obnoxious kind of Christian who seems to use science as a tool to proselytize) and Nelson fulfills the stereotype: he opens the debate with a quotemine and gross misrepresentation. He claims that W. Ford Doolittle rejects common descent. He claims that this notion that “all living things share a common ancestor” is being challenged; unfortunately and misleadingly, he puts the emphasis in the wrong place. Doolittle would say that “all living things share a common ancestor”. Doolittle argues that there was a large pool of organisms down near the root of the tree of life that liberally swapped genes among one another, so that you can’t trace life back to a single common ancestor — you can trace it back to a large population where species distinctions were greatly blurred.

Misrepresentation of legitimate scientists it’s about all Nelson brings to the debate. It’s an excellent example of why it’s a waste of time to treat these kooks as fair and equal and trustworthy.

For another example, Nelson claims that one justification for pushing ID is that our past understanding of biology was flawed (not that he says anything that ID contributes to our current understanding). He claims that when he was in school he was taught that “cells are just bags of enzymes”, and that ID has revealed all these amazing, unexplainable “molecular machines.” Nelson is about my age or younger; when I was taught cell biology back in those same dark ages, I certainly was not taught any such nonsense. Compartments and transport, for instance, were major parts of the curriculum.

It’s not just that these creationists don’t understand biology — it’s that they actively lie about biology. Don’t trust them.

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Mike Dunford has another recent example of Nelson mangling a scientific conclusion.