Sep 29 2008
Not Chicken Fingers, Fish Fingers
Because roughly 50% of Americans do not recognize the validity of the theory of evolution, I think today we should put fish fingers on the menu. There is going to be no dipping sauce, for my use of “menu” is metaphorical.
According to a recent article over at ScienceDaily titled, Primordial Fish Had Rudimentary Fingers,
Tetrapods, the first four-legged land animals, are regarded as the first organisms that had fingers and toes. Now researchers at Uppsala University can show that this is wrong. Using medical x-rays, they found rudiments of fingers in the fins in fossil Panderichthys, the “transitional animal,” which indicates that rudimentary fingers developed considerably earlier than was previously thought.
Two things that make a good theory strong are explanatory power — it can provide insight into the mechanisms behind some phenomenon – and its generation of testable predictions. Evolutionary theory does both. We could be justified in saying that finding this new fossil is yet another way that evolutionary theory has passed a test. Voila, one more transitional form.
On the other hand, a hand that may be webbed or not — I’m not sure – we’ve got the alternative, or alternatives, which, among the American populace, are largely religion-based and/or inspired. God done it or Things are so complex it couldn’t possibly be the product of natural mechanisms.
If creationism/ID were a valid theory, there should be some explanatory power accompanying it. It should be able to explain why, for example, we might find a fossil of a fish that has rudimentary fingers. Of course, creationism by any name doesn’t offer any comprehensible reason for this to be the case.
Intelligent design likewise does not provide testable predictions. Can we test whether a god had its hand in creation? Clearly we are not talking about an alternative to evolutionary theory. We’re talking about an untestable hypothesis, at best. Which is definitely not science.
Pass the tartar sauce of rationalization. I think most fundamentalists are going to find the rapidly accumulating data unearthed by scientific inquiry, such as this one about rudimentary fish fingers, to be completely unpalatable.
Unfortunately, I think most fundamentalists have that same modular brain configuration as politicians have that allow them to selectively ignore reality. I have discussed ID with a couple of very adamant, but intelligent, fundies and they, literally, say”scientists will publish anything their supporters want them to” and thus, all scientific evidence for anything is considered irrelevant. However, the more evidence there is, the better the discussion.
I love tetrapods – it is one of the main items I throw into any evolutionary discussion!
I had read a study which showed that even sharks have unexpressed genes for fingers, and have been carrying those genes from generation to generation for nearly 350 million years. They just don’t have any genes to make hands. This makes no sense from a creationist or intelligent design standpoint,does it?
Nice article. I love tets, too.
Is this the “tu quoque” fallacy, or is it just projection?