Next up was
Peter and Rosemary Grant, of Darwin's finches fame, and their studies of the finches on the Galapagos Island of Daphne Major. you may be familiar with their study of the sizes of finch beaks, changing in size in reaction to conditions on the islands, droughts versus rainy conditions for example, and here they discussed genetic studies that have been done by others as an extension of their own research.
Peter Grant spoke first and discussed the gene BMP4, which affects beak width. It was suspected this gene affected shape and so researchers injected it into chickens, resulting in what Dr. Grant said was "a beak which shouldn't have looked like that." Now that the gene had been isolated, Grant said, focus has shifted from structure of the gene to regulation.
Rosemary Grant's segment discussed hybridization of two species of the finches, Geospiza fortis and Geospiza scandens by a situation I had never heard before and one I thought was quite interesting. It seems, unless I am truly muddling this up, that a bird can learn another species song instead of the one of its parents, and may therefore be receptive to mating with other birds of closely related species! Freakshow!
So for example, say a female bird of G. fortis loses its father and grows up near members of G. scandens. She may learn the song of scandens males and therefore be receptive to mating with them, resulting in hybrid offspring.
This led me to wonder if a Garth Brooks groupie were transported from the deep south to the East Village in New York City where she heard punk music instead of country, would she give birth to punk offspring? I'm not certain that a Garth Brooks groupie wouldn't carry genes too primitive to produce viable offspring with an East Village Punk, so this might open some interesting research possibilites. Who wants to apply for the NSF grant?
The mid afternoon session featured Eugenie Scott of the National Center for Science Education speaking on What Would Darwin Say to Today's Creationists. NCSE is that pesky little organization in Calfornia that says Intelligent Design is not science and is regularly railed against by Answers in Genesis.
Scott began by reviewing many of the quotes, going back to the old bearded boy himself, prediciting impending demise of evolutionary theory, and also one by ID's golden boy, William Dembski, in which he ponders what science will be like when ID has replaced evolution. "We're still waiting," Genie remarked.
She broke anti-evolutionists into three categories: first, the "theory in crisis" camp, that believe evolution is just going to somehow implode any day now (they've been waiting for that day since about four hours after the publication of The Origin), Second, the "you can't accept evolution and still believe in God" gang; "Ken Miller, please pick up the white house phone." Incidentally, Miller is not the only religious scientists out there. There are boodles of 'em. And finially, the most devious of the anti-evos, the "it's only fair to teach both sides" guys. This is, of course, the latest ploy of the Discovery Institute and most IDers.
Scott made an interesting point that would doubtless have the DI tranparently crying foul; she included their brand of creationism into "special creation," along with ken Ham of AiG who believes that Adam rode to the office aboard his trustry Stegosaurus.
Most of the DI fellows may distance themselves from their bretheren who believe the earth is only six thousand years old, and Noah spent a year on a boat with the world's first, and most heavily utilized, pooper scooper, but because they still believe that structures like the bacterial flagellum (my god I'm sick of that thing) and the vertebrate blood clotting system could not have evolved and therefore were "poofed" into being... well, what else is that but special creation?
Scott then showed a diagram by Young Earth Creationist Kurt Wise contrasting evolution's branching tree of life with the creationist "lawn", where each "created kind" has its own distinct origin and lineage apart from the other creatures Adam named on day whatever-it-was.
The DI's "textbook", Explore Evolution, has basically the same diagram.
Scott discussed the cinematic trainwreck Expelled, but I won't go into details here. NCSE does a good job of taking the makers of that distorted piece of propaganda apart on its web site, Expelled Exposed.
She closed her talk by saying how excited Darwin would be today by the many lines of independent evidence that all converge to overwhelmingly support his "big ideas": continental drift, biogeography, genetics, the fossil record, evo-devo and more.
What would Darwin have to say to today's creationists? According to Scott, with his sternest look, "What were you thinking?"
Flightless Frank discusses creationism with NCSE's Genie Scott, "You mean I wasn't created in God's image? Just look at this gorgeous flippers!"
The last talk I attended was Daniel Dennett, renown philosopher and winner of the conference's Darwin look-a-like contest. Dennett began discussing what he called the trickle down theory of creation. Some higher intelligent being creates some lesser construction, say God creating humans, and then perhaps humans creating the chia pet. Dennett himself didn't cite the chia pet as an example; that one's my own.
In fact, according to Dennett, that's pretty much the way all creation stories ran until Darwin. His gift to our understanding was "bubble up" creation, in which the creator doesn't have to be aware of what it is it is creating. Dennett called this "competence without comprehension", and cites todays computers as an example. A modern desktop computer (or this laptop for that matter) doesn't actually understand anything about algebra, word processing, but is able to create programs for performing these operations through bubble up creation.
A good example from the natural world mentioned by Dennett are butterflies with eye patterns on their wings. The butterfly doesn't know what these markings are, or what benefit they bestow up on them, but the result is the same; they ward of predetors and aid in the butterfly's reproductive success. Natural selection may have produced the markings, but it did not do so knowing the affect they would have.
Dennett also showed a very intriguing image of a termite mound and a cathedral, seen below.
