debate1

Jeffrey K. McKee & David Phillips

WOSU Open Line 12/19/00

Fred Andrle – Welcome back to Open Line at 820 WOSU am. I’m Fred Andrle. This hour on the program: Did human beings evolve or were we created? Did we come into being by an evolution through the millennia from lower life forms, or was there a separate creation of human beings, a separate act of God? This hour on Open Line we’ll hear both points of view in a dialogue between an evolutionist and a creationist. Joining us in our studio is Jeffrey McKee, an associate professor of anthropology here at the Ohio State University. His new book is called The Riddled Chain, subtitled Chance, Coincidence and Chaos in Human Evolution . Welcome, Jeff McKee.

Jeff McKee: Thank you. It’s a pleasure to be here.

FA: And joining us on the telephone, David Phillips, professor of earth science and geology at the Master’s College. He is also a lecturer for the Institute for Creation Research. Dave Phillips, welcome to Open Line. Good to have you here.

David Phillips: Thank you, Fred. It’s a pleasure to be here.

FA: And our number, after a few minutes, after we lay some groundwork, is 614-292-8513. And let me give each of you about three minutes just to outline your basic position then we’ll be a lot more informal about it. Let me go to Dave Phillips first. In terms of the creationist viewpoint, tell me, from your point of view, how did we human beings come to exist?

DP: Well, Fred, it’s exciting for me to be a creationist in these days because the evidence for creation is overwhelming. First of all, when we look at the fossil record, we do not find intermediate forms to demonstrate any kind of macroevolution to any extent. So to speak, we do not see the “Tree to McKee” type of macroevolution that we would need if evolution is true. Now, the creationists acknowledge variational changes within certain taxonomic groups. That’s not the issue; the issue is macroevolution. We do not find those intermediate forms. Also, we find tremendous evidence for design. A book by Michael Behe for example, has come out with the understanding that – it’s called Darwin’s Black Box, by the way – and, when we look at complex cell structures and cell machinery, it’s unbelievably more complex than it was ever imagined. For one example, blood clotting: it takes a large number of individual enzyme reactions for blood to clot. If blood doesn’t clot, you die. Therefore, selection cannot explain blood clotting to the extent that it needs to. A better explanation would be design. Further, the laws of thermodynamics, the two most proven laws in all of science, which say that matter is neither created nor destroyed, and also that every natural process is going towards degeneration, when we look at natural processes, argue on one hand that the universe could not have created itself, and also on the other hand that all natural systems, unless there’s intelligence involved, tend to go towards chaos. This is tremendous evidence that the universe must have been designed.

FA: Um-hm. Okay. Dave Phillips. Jeff McKee, the evolution position: how would you differ?

JM: Well, I’ve been very privileged to spend ten years of my life in South Africa, dealing with some of the fossil sites where we find the evidence for human evolution. Now, Mr. Phillips has just said that there are no transitional fossils for the human fossil record. Now I’ve been privileged to actually hold those in my hand and study them up close, and many others have as well. Moreover, these fossils are published and available for everyone to read, in books such as mine, or any other book on evolution or human evolution. The value of evolutionary theory, though, is that it goes to the point of explaining these fossils, the fossil support of it. It also explains our biology today. There are a lot of peculiarities of the complexities of our bodies today, as Mr. Phillips rightly points out, and evolution is the most powerful scientific explanation of how these features of our bodies came to be. Without an evolutionary explanation, there are just a number of features of our anatomy and physiology which are totally inexplicable. They are not explicable by design, but once you see how they evolved, how humans evolved from an ape-like creature, how the ape-like creature evolved from a monkey-like creature, and so on back the line – and we have a fossil record of all these steps along the way – then suddenly you can come to understand some of the peculiarities of human anatomy. I spend a whole chapter in my book, The Riddled Chain, on some of these peculiarities. But it also explains how we evolved our great intelligence. That was a very slow process, and we see in the fossil record the gradual expansion of the brain relative to body size, and we see the gradual increase in complexity of the brain through the evolutionary process, as we get the cerebral capacity for language, and so on. And it’s all there in the fossil record for everyone to look at, and I encourage our listeners to actually look at those fossils.

FA: Two very different impressions of the fossil record. Dave Phillips, from the creationist point of view, you’d say that a fossil record through which we can trace an evolution, you don’t see it existing.

DP: Well, apparently Dr. McKee thinks that I am naïve in relation to human origins. I spent five years studying Homo erectus fossils for my master’s thesis. I am quite aware of the fossils that Dr. McKee claims are intermediate forms, and that’s his interpretation. But the literature and the data which I have examined just as much as he has for the last 25 years does not bear that out.

FA: Um-hm. When you say, Jeff McKee, that there is a fossil record, I mean, what… I’m naïve about that. What would we see if we could look from your point of view at a fossil record from a so-called lower life form leading to a human being. What am I looking at?

JM: Well my own specialty is with the hominid fossil record, in other words, the members of our own family. Right now we can trace hominids back at least to 4.2 million years ago…

FA: And a hominid is what?

JM: A hominid is, well, I was just about to explain that. The earliest ones we find, and we just found some more that may date back to 5 or 6 million years ago, but, a hominid is defined as a member of our taxonomic family, and it starts off as a small, about 3 feet, 3 ½ feet high, bipedal animal – in other words, it walked on two legs and stood upright. That is the defining characteristic of an early hominid. We find a lot of fossil evidence of these early hominids known as the australopithecines. But they have a very small brain for their body size, they have very large faces and teeth which are different from ours, adapted for different functions. That then, is followed by a period of early Homo fossils, then we get into our own genus. We are Homo sapiens. And, about 2 ½ million years ago we see a variety of forms starting to appear, which are very closely related to the Australopithecines in some ways, but taking a major step in terms of increase of brain size, reduction in the size of the face and the teeth, and a lot of features, yet they are still bipedal, upright creatures. Moreover, at that time when we see this initial expansion of the brain, we also see the initial use of stone tools. They are very primitive stone tools, and don’t do much – it’s just a couple of flakes knocked off a rock – but we see that technological advance coming along with the biological advance. From then on, the Homo erectus that Dave Phillips talks about, takes that a bit further. The animal starts to get a bit larger, the brain starts to get a bit larger and more complex, the face continues to change, but none of those are anything like what we see on earth today. They are extinct animals of sorts, but they are our ancestors, and one can not deny that there is a sequence. And I would challenge Dave Phillips, or any other young earth creationist, such as Dave Phillips, to explain that sequence, and, moreover, to explain the entire sequence in the fossil record, starting back from 3 ½ billion years ago, up to now.

FA: Okay, Dave Phillips, you’ve got a challenge on the table.

DP: Great. I will more than accept that challenge. Let’s start with the Cambrian explosion, where you’ve got a vast number of complex organisms, almost all phyla appearing in the fossil record, according to the theory of evolution at 600 million years before present, without one known intermediate form. And these are not simple organisms; these are highly complex organisms with highly complex structures. I would challenge Dr. McKee to produce these evolutionary ancestors that he’s talking about – we don’t find them. Evolution has not explained the origin of life. When the first life is found in the fossil record, it is highly complex, and we don’t find intermediates of how life evolved from non-life. Evolution has failed miserably to explain this; that’s number one. Number two, evolutionists have not explained the origin of complex organisms, as I mentioned with the Cambrian explosion. Number three, Dr. McKee talks about the australopithecines as though the bipedality in those had established and proven. But we all know, that the scholars that have done the most work on those, Dr. Charles Oxnard and his professor before him, Sir Solly Zuckerman, who did 15 years of multi-variant analysis on the australopithecines did not come to the conclusion that they were bipeds, but rather came to the conclusion that they had a form of locomotion like orangs. Therefore Dr. McKee assumes the australopithecines walked upright. Now, in addition to that, there’s independent evidence to support that they did not walk upright. There have been studies on inner ear canals done on australopithecines, and this has lumped those with non-bipeds. Therefore this is strong evidence also that the australopithecines did not walk upright. And yet, with all this evidence, Dr. McKee assumes their uprightness.

FA: Dave, let me ask you one question, and I would ask both of you as we move along to define some terms that we’re not familiar with. What was the Cambrian explosion?

DP: The Cambrian explosion is a time period, according to the theory of evolution, that took place about 600 million years ago, where we find highly complex organisms such as trilobytes, brachiopods, cucumbers, sea lilies, and so forth, and it’s a time period that had no intermediate forms. It’s said to be a highly structured and highly ordered group of organisms that appear in the fossil record without known intermediates, and everybody knows that. And, you see, evolution has not produced the intermediate forms necessary to document it. If that were the case, then Stephen J. Gould would not have had to come out with the other theory of punctuated equilibrium, acknowledging that the old Darwinian gradualism has failed miserably to explain the fossil record. Not only do we find gaps, but the gaps are systematic. We do not find intermediate forms between any of the major types of plants and animals that we have. And Dr. McKee knows this, and he knows that the missing link is still missing, even when it comes to human origins. We have failed miserably to demonstrate macroevolution. Don’t show me small, variational changes between organisms; show me macro changes between major taxonomic groups. Evolution has failed to do this on a large scale. I would challenge Dr. McKee to show me examples of that. He certainly hasn’t done that with the australopithecines.

FA: Alright, let’s go… a challenge also issued here for Jeff McKee.

JM: Well, I have quite a big challenge: I have to cover the last 4 ½ billion years of the earth in just a minute. It is true that there are gaps in the fossil record, and there is no textbook out there that pretends otherwise. There are also a lot of sequences within the fossil record that fit the predictions of evolutionary theory wholeheartedly. Now let’s do go back to the origin of the earth, 4.4 billion years ago – I know, Mr. Phillips, that you don’t believe that the earth is that old, but from a scientific point of view the earth is 4.4 billion years old. It took a billion years before life first appeared as cells. Now, we don’t know the exact process of the origin of life, that is true, and it would be irresponsible of me to say that we do know how life formed. But there are a lot of people working on it, we have a few clues, we can see how cells can form – not as complex as the cells that produce life – we can see how organic chemicals can form without violating the second law of thermodymics, or anything like that – they form by themselves in certain situations. And so, it took a billion years of experiments before life began. Then for the next 2 billion years or so we had nothing but these simple, single cells. It took another 2 billion years, well, depending on how you count - almost 2 billion years – it took that long for those cells to turn into complex cells, into what we call the eukaryotes, or cells that have a nucleated DNA and that sort of thing, a complex cell. Those were around for another few billion years until we finally do get to the Cambrian explosion. It takes a long long time for these things to evolve into complex organisms. Now what we see with the Cambrian explosion is really a fossil explosion, because at that point we have some hard creatures which fossilize more readily. We do see them appearing somewhat quickly, but when you say Cambrian explosion, we’re talking about a period of 5 million years; that’s not really as quick as a lot of people seem to think it is. 5 billion years, to have some fairly complex organisms in one sense; there is the trilobyte, which incidentally is our state fossil here in Ohio. But a trilobyte is no zebra, I mean zebras just didn’t appear out of nowhere during the Cambrian explosion. We had simply sea dwelling creatures, which had the basic pattern which we still hold today. They are segmented animals, they have the basic structures in terms of a digestive system, and a central nervous system and so on, some of these basic structures that we still carry with us today. From that point on, and this is the point that Mr. Phillips seems to ignore, we have a lot of transitional fossils – I know, you’re laughing – but that’s absolutely true. You don’t just see fish suddenly appear, you see jawless fishes appear, then you see fish with jaws, then you see fish with segmented vertebrae and so on. Once again, you don’t see zebras suddenly appearing at that stage; we’re still in the water. You see, if you look in any paleontology textbook all of those transitional forms are there. Now, true, we don’t have every single step of the way; the fossil record is incomplete. But it does continue on, and it shows a distinct succession. Now, whether you like to think of those as transitional forms, the creation idea still does not explain the succession of animals that we find.

FA: Okay, I know this is very complex but I want to give everybody a chance here. And Dave Phillips, your response.

DP: Unfortunately Dr. McKee has not done his homework. Dr. Giberso [?] has demonstrated that we don’t necessarily have the laws of superposition in effect. If you have running water, you can get depositions of sediments in a horizontal plain. And this was published in Nature recently also to verify that it’s not just us lunatic creationists saying this. So, you don’t necessarily have fossils in sequences based on the law of superposition, which is what he was referring to. What I would like to get back to, though, which was an absurd notion by Dr. McKee, that life came into existence from non-life and that this doesn’t violate the laws of thermodynamics. Well, if that’s the case, I would love for him to go into the lab and show biochemists what they’re doing wrong, because we can’t go into the lab today and create life from non-life. Evolution has failed on this account miserably, and Dr. McKee knows that. I would refer him to Scientific American 1991, an article by John Horgan, where he points out the miserable failure of evolution to explain the origin of life. And not only that, Dr. McKee has presented the classic “just-so story” that evolutionists always present. He hasn’t shown us an example of intermediate forms. Yes, we do see a highly complex variety of organisms appearing in the fossil record, but these are without known intermediates, and he knows that. He has failed to give examples of how non-life has come into existence, becoming life, he has failed to give an example of how invertebrates evolved into vertebrates, he has failed to give an example of how reptiles evolved into mammals. Show us the intermediates, Dr. McKee.

JM: I was priviledged to work in South Africa for a number of years – you just mentioned reptiles into mammals. South Africa is replete with a number of fossils known as “reptile-like mammals.” And we do see the distinct transitional forms, they’re known as therapsids, and cynodonts. We do have the fossil record, and I encourage any of our listeners to go out and look in any fossil book – just walk into a bookstore and you will see these transitional forms that Mr. Phillips is denying exist. They are there. Once again, he is correct: we do not have every single step of the way, but the one place where we do have the most clear succession of fossils is in the evolution of the hominids. As I said, we can trace that back now at least to 4.2 million years ago, without interuption. He claims that the australopithecines which I studied were not bipedal and that bipedality is an assumption. Well, it’s not an assumption; it’s a very heavily tested….

DP: Will you tell that to Dr. Oxnard please?

JM: I… Yes, I actually know Charles Oxnard very well, he’s a friend of mine …

DP: Good.

JM: … and we have had discussions about this, and he is in the minority. He really sees …. Let me add this about Charles Oxnard, he also sees australopithecines as a transitional form, he’s not saying that there is no evolution…..

DP: I’d have to see that in writing. He’s never put that in any of his literature that he sees it as a transitional form.

JM: He is an evolutionist though.

DP: He is an evolutionist, true, but….

JM: He just has a different interpretation of the biomechanics based on…

DP: And he knows more about the bipedality of hominids than just about anybody around, Dr. McKee, and you know it.

JM: I know it ?

DP: ..that’s right, and he does not agree with you. Further…

JM: He is in the minority, by the way.

DP: Minority does not prove scientific fact, does it, Dr. McKee?

JM: No. The data do, and the data are clearly there. We do have…

DP: Really?

JM: Try the bipedal footprints at Laetoli…

DP: Well, you’d better tell that to Dr. Russell Tuttle, then, because Russ Tuttle doesn’t see those as having been made by the australopithecines, and he has spent many many years….

JM: No, he saw them being made by an early hominid, he just disagreed that they were the australopithecines, he thought they might be early Homo, and….[DP interrupts unintelligibly] …. I also know Russ Tuttle, who is an evolutionist. He’s not denying evolution at all; you’re taking these people out of context.

DP: Not true. I never said he was not an evolutionist; I said that he does not see those footprints as being made by the australopithecines. It’s just that you say they are. You know yourself that this is a great mystery. The australopithecines had curved fingers and toes. They could not have made those footprints and you know it. We all know it. So who made the footprints?

FA: So the question is whether these hominids that we’re discussing actually walked on two legs. Dave Phillips, you’re saying they walked on all fours, in essence? Dave?

DP: They had a form of locomotion similar to orangs. We don’t know since they’re extinct; nobody has direct evidence….

FA: Similar to an orangutan, but you’re not seeing them up on two feet, in essence? Right?

DP: Well, it’s possible that they could have walked upright. Chimps are capable of walking upright but it’s not they’re normal form of locomotion.

FA: Not their normal…. And Jeff, you’re suggesting that it probably was.

JM: Yeah, they were habitual bipeds, as we call them. They do have remnants of their evolutionary past, in that their upper limbs are longer than ours, for example, so that does…

DP: Just exactly like apes?

JM: Similar to apes. It’s a climbing adaptation. One of my Ph.D. students did a detailed study of the scapula, which you would know as the shoulder blade, and found that these are adapted for climbing, which is not surprising given the time period and the evolutionary sequence, but that they were still…

DP: …[somebody’s work] has confirmed that, I will agree. Yes, they do show adaptations to trees, but that has nothing whatsoever to walking on the ground. And, as Dr. McKee knows, Sterns and Sussman did detailed studies on the anatomy of australopithecines in the 1980s, and confirmed that they were tree-dwellers for the most part. That, yes, they would be capable of coming down on the ground and walking upright, but so can modern chimps. What we’re talking is habitual uprightness. This has not been established. Furthermore, the cranial capacity of australopithecines, as Dr. McKee knows, falls smack dab in the middle of the apes. There’s no evidence of any tool use. The australopithecines have been found intermixed with other hominids at the same time. We all know that; that was established back in the 1960s, that you had Homo habilis, Homo erectus, and Australopithecus all in the same strata at the same time. So which one is the hominid, and which one is not? Were they all living in the same location at the exact same time? Come on, let’s be factual now.

JM: Yes, let’s do be factual. And you’re absolutely correct that there’s australopithecines and early Homo living at the same time. The australopithecines that we find living at the same time as Homo are a species known as Australopithecus robustus. They are derived in a particular direction which ended up being an evolutionary dead-end. And yes, for about a million years or more, Homo and the australopithecines did live side by side, after this divergence in the lineage. But they do trace their ancestry back to the same early australopithecines.

DP: Well, Dr. McKee has a real problem, because the first hominid found at Olduvai Gorge, Olduvai Hominid 1, and you can look this up in Michael Day’s Guide to Fossil Man, which I’m sure you’re very familiar with, was indeed Homo sapiens. And even though that’s been attributed to an intrusive burial, it’s never been established as an intrusive burial.

FA: Okay, let us pause here. We’re going to break for two minutes of news. A dialogue this hour, the creationist point of view, David Phillips, professor of earth science and geology at the Master’s College. He’s also a lecturer for the Institute for Creation Research in California. Jeffrey McKee, associate professor of anthropology at the Ohio State University; his new book is called The Riddled Chain: Chance, Coincidence and Chaos in Human Evolution. Callers, thank you for waiting patiently. Those of you who can wait, we’ll get to you right after the news. You’re on your source for NPR news, Intelligent Talk, 820 OSU am.

Fred Andrle: Welcome back to Open Line at 820 WOSU am. I’m Fred Andrle. Did human beings evolve, or were we created? Did we come into being by an evolution through the millenia from lower life forms, or was there a separate creation of human beings, a separate act of God? On Open Line the hour a dialogue, an evolutionist and a creationist. Joining us in our studios, once again, Jeffrey McKee, associate professor of anthropology at the Ohio State University, his new book The Riddled Chain. David Phillips, on the telephone with us, professor of earth science and geology at the Master’s College, also a lecturer for the Institute for Creation Research. We’re at 614-292-8513. All of our phone lines are full. Callers, I’ll urge you to be concise, and I thank you for waiting. Howard is on the line; hello, Howard.

Howard: Hello. A question…. An observation and a question. First of all, your ontological arguments are about advancement regarding creation of life, and as such, are beyond human experience. The best you can do is speculate upon them. However, as far as evolution is concerned, there is a vast body of empirical evidence to support it, whereas the other is based upon Biblical interpretation. Secondly, as far as my question goes, we all accept the fact that a human being can be developed from a few undifferentiated cells in about twenty years. Why is this so difficult to accept that this is so difficult to occur over a process of billions of years? I’ll hang up and listen.

FA: Okay, thank you Howard. Dave Phillips, sounds like questions for you.

David Phillips: Well, first of all, there’s a couple of wrong assumptions there from the caller. He assumes that there’s a vast body of evidence that supports evolution. Nothing could be farther from the truth. I am a scientist just like Dr. McKee and I am saying that after studying this for many many years that I do not see the evidence. And the only reason that evolution is able to have its case presented is that creation has not been allowed to compete, and that’s why I’m thankful and grateful to be on a radio show like this. I believe in the marketplace of open ideas, that the case for creation is superior. I would challenge the reader to go get Dr. Behe’s, Dr. Michael Behe’s book Darwin’s Black Box, and see the strong evidence that supports creation. Number two, he talked about the differentiation of cells, and that this supports evolution. Well, you look at the incredible complexity that we’re finding in cells, and the case could not be farther from the truth. As we begin to study molecular biology and see the incredible machinery that’s in cells, it demonstrates complexity beyond imagination. Further, for an organism to have growth, it must have all of the genetic material in place from the point of conception. And that comes from two complex organisms that already have complex information in the system. So, my question back to the caller, would be where did that complex information come from? And Dr. McKee has failed miserably to explain how the evolution can match up with the laws of thermodynamics. It certainly does not. You see, all natural systems are going towards degeneration. You must have complexity in the system to begin with, otherwise it’s a natural tendency, it’s called entropy, for systems to wind down, to wear out, and to wax old. That’s what we see in nature; we don’t see things go the opposite direction. But evolution says that that’s the case, and this is utterly incorrect.

FA: Okay, Jeff McKee.

Jeff McKee: May I just ask Dave Phillips, since the caller has hung up: so, under the second law of thermodynamics - as you interpret it, not as a physicist interprets it, but as you interpret it – you would say that it’s impossible for a single cell to originate and for that single cell then to go into a multicellular organism and for that multicellular organism then to increase its complexity into a multicellular organism with differentiated cells, and that it would then be impossible under the second law of thermodynamics for that multicellular organism to then become segmented, and then impossible under the second law of thermodynamics for that segmented organism to then develop limbs, and so on and so on all the way up to a human being. Is that correct?

DP: What I’m saying is: start with the initial question - I mean, that’s a rather lengthy question, you have many many subquestions in there - but I’m saying that for life to come into existence on its own, by sheer random naturalistic processes, I’m saying that contradicts the second law of thermodynamics. And, when you look at probability of life coming into existence on its own, Sir Fred Hoyle, a very very famous astronomer, has calculated that. The odds of life coming into existence, if the universe is 20 billion years, with millions and millions of planets with atmospheres similar to the earth, the odds of life coming into existence is only one to 10 to the 40th thousandths. That is, by all mathematical probability, an absolutely impossible number. And…..

JM: I agree. And there is absolutely no scientist on earth who is proposing that the origin of life was totally random, as you suggest. That’s the problem behind the mathematics…

DP: It’s a naturalistic process, you have to have a naturalistic process, otherwise….

JM: Exactly. You have to have a process, and that process is evolution. Now, for the origin of life: we do not know the … I’m agreeing with you…. We do not know the exact process, but what once you have a process then those numbers start to come down. Now, let me give you an example….. let me give you an example of the improbability that you just calculated. Now there’s….

DP: Wait… just one second, Dr. McKee. Back up to what you said. You made a leap of logic there that made no sense whatsoever, you just have…

JM: That’s because I’m a miserable failure.

DP: You just agreed with my case, that you have no answer.

JM: That’s correct. That’s correct. That makes it a realm of scientific inquiry.

DP: Okay. You have no answer, but you’re assuming the fact of evolution, and I’m saying…

JM: The fact of evolution comes after the origin of life.

DP: Well, then why does every textbook in biology have a picture of Stanley Miller’s experiments, and assume that life happened naturalistically? We cannot do that.

JM: That is part of the scientific process of discovering how….

DP: Not to assume it happened naturalistically is not part of the scientific…

JM: No one has assumed it, it’s an hypothesis that we are testing and testing. We do not have the answer yet, but we also…

DP: When do you get to the point where it’s failed? When do we get to the point? We’ve been trying to test that hypothesis for 150 years. It has failed miserably, and everybody knows it.

JM: May I ask….

DP: Go back to the Scientific American article and read what it has to say.

JM: I read that article. May I ask you, we have not cured the common cold, so do we throw out all of medicinal science? No, we keep on investigating, we do not have all of the answers, but we do keep on investigating.

DP: That’s a leap of logic, to say the common cold has anything to do with the origin of life. Let’s be real here.

FA: Okay. Let us go to our telephones, and let us go to Beth. Hello, Beth, you’re on the air.

Beth: Hi there. Oh, gosh, my cordless is about to die. I’m switching phones….I’ve been on hold for a while…

FA: Okay, well, we’ll get to Beth here as soon as she switches phones.

B: There we go. Hi. Okay. Couple of things… first of all, I would agree that the origin and the complexity and the diversity of life is clearly miraculous, whether or not you consider that Godly or via nature’s rules. There’s a couple of things that I’d like to hear from you guys. Clearly this is really emotional for both of you; you’re sniping at each other, you’ve got a lot of attacking and interrupting, to me that’s really distracting from the content.

JM: I agree.

B: And if this is such an emotional issue, I’d really like to hear from both of you: what the emotion is about? And the second issue goes back to the issue of intermediate steps. Seems to me, that a lot of what might indicate intermediate steps, whether or not they do exist, is stuff that is permanently unavailable to us. In other words, how chemical reactions occurred in bodies, and how creatures behaved, none of that stuff is directly in the fossil record. So both sides of this argument, it seems to me, are making a lot of assumptions and interpretations from the data we do have, because realistically, the stuff we really need is rotted away. I’ll hang up and listen.

FA: Okay, thank you. I must say, gentlemen, I do agree with Beth, we’ve gotten a bit exercised in the last few minutes, so let’s take a deep breath and continue on, and I’ll ask each one of you on both of those issues. Jeff McKee, is this a bit of an emotional argument for you, number one, and let’s talk about what Beth says about certain things not being, simply, seeable in a fossil record.

JM: Okay, on the emotional side, I suppose it does become emotional, because there are a lot of very good scientists who have been out there doing a lot of work on the study of evolution, and to have them misquoted, and to have their good work misrepresented by the creationists, as has been done by Dave Phillips today…

DP: Not true.

JM: …and by members of the Institute for Creation Research, it does become emotional. It’s a personal attack on our integrity. Now, we do discuss this within evolution science. I think it would be good for the audience to know that not all evolutionists agree about the process, whether natural selection is more important or chance is more important at various stages, how it actually works. It’s a very young science which is growing, and that’s really what makes the science so exciting, because it is a growing science, we do have a lot to learn. Now, when the creationists jump in and say “well, you don’t have an answer to this,” well, that is correct, but that doesn’t mean that it’s not true. Now, what has happened is that, yes, Beth is correct, that a lot of the stuff we would need to fill out the details of all this are gone. The fossil record is not a complete record of the past; I wish it were, although it would make our digging efforts quite assiduous. But, yes, a lot of that is gone. But if you have a theory about evolution, then you expect to see certain things in the fossil record, and that’s exactly what we do see. We do see a succession of organisms, we do see transitional parts. If you would like an example, you can look at the evolution of the arm. I read a book recently by a local creationist who said “well what can you do with half an arm?” So I thought about that, well I’ve never really looked into that, and I looked into my, I just scanned through my paleontology textbook, and saw that the first thing that developed in one of these segmented organisms was a shoulder blade. Okay, that’s the start. That’s part of an arm. Then, what came, what came later in the fossil record is one bone sticking out from that shoulder blade, into a pectoral fin. What comes after that is two bones coming off of that with other little bones. They aren’t formed into a hand quite yet, but you can see the evolutionary process. You do see the transitional forms just as is predicted by the theory, so that the fossil evidence confirms the theory. Moreover, a lot of the other evidence which we can test the evolutionary theory with is genetic data. If you see similar organisms then you can test them genetically to see how genetically similar they are. If, for example, we found that a chimpanzee was so genetically different from us that it couldn’t possibly have a common ancestor with us, then we would have disproved the theory of evolution. So what a scientist does is look for disproof of a theory. We have found no disproof of evolution whatsoever. Dave Phillips…

DP: Oh come on. That’s not true and you know it.

FA: Okay, now Dave, first of all, back to you to answer Beth’s question. Very emotional for you – why?

DP: Well, first of all, Dr. McKee did exactly what the caller asked him not to do, he started out by, as her phrase, sniping at me, by saying I misrepresented his case in evolution. Listen, all of my training has been in evolution. I’ve never taken a class on creation. I’ve gone to all the same types of universities that Dr. McKee has. I’ve studied all the great works of scientists and paleontologists, just like Dr. McKee has. I think I understand the issues quite well. And Dr. McKee has to attack me ad hominim by saying I’ve misrepresented his case because he knows what I’m saying is true, that we don’t find the intermediates that he’s talking about. But you know what, that’s true, many organisms are no longer preserved as fossils. That’s quite true. However, our museums have 250,000 fossil species. You can go to the American Museum of Natural History, you can go to the Field Museum in Chicago, you can go to the British Museum of Natural History, go there and ask them to have you see their intermediate forms. They’ll look at you like you’re crazy. They won’t be able to produce any. Dr. McKee knows this. Now, beyond that, it’s what we do know that refutes evolution, not what we don’t know, and that is that people like Dr. Michael Behe, who is not a so to speak, one of us strict creationists, who has written a book, Darwin’s Black Box, has demonstrated that there’s tremendous evidence for design. Let’s look at blood clotting for just a minute. In order for blood to clot, you need to have what are called platelets. These are complex molecules that, as soon as you get cut, a large number of reactions must take place in sequence for that blood to clot. There’s dozens of these enzymatic reactions that must take place in precise sequence. If the sequence does not occur, then you die, you bleed to death. Now, the problem is, this absolutely falsifies the notion that natural selection and mutation have produced organisms through life. There are many many dozens of examples like that, but this is only one. And, this cannot be explained because all of these enzymatic reactions must take place in a cascade sequence, otherwise you die. Therefore, it cannot slowly and gradually evolve through time. Darwin said 150 that if we could produce organisms, or organelles, or any type of structures that could not be explained by natural selection, then his theory would be falsified. We have done that. Dr. Behe’s book has dozens of examples that falsify neo-Darwinism.

FA: And I know you have a response, Jeff McKee, but we must get back to our callers. And, John, you’ve been waiting patiently. Thanks for being with us.

John: Yes, hi Fred. It’s nice to call about a discussion that has nothing to do with chads, although no less lively, I must say. First of all, I’d like to defend Dr. McKee. I don’t think his attacks were ad hominum. Clearly, Mr. Phillips, earlier, quoted the work of eminent scientists out of context, not mentioning that they were evolutionists, and that clearly would have left a misimpression in people’s minds had it not been pointed out by Mr. McKee. My question involves Mr. Phillips’ focus on the Cambrian explosion. He seems to recognize that it happened 600 million years ago. I just want to clarify in my mind how the logic, how that is consistent with saying that we have only existed in our current form as long as we have. When did creation happen? If he accepts that the Cambrian explosion happened 600 million years ago, clearly there is some conflict between that fact and when we were - quote-unquote - created. And I just would like to say that, if he does accept that it was 600 million years ago, at least it does show that there’s been some evolution in the thought as far as how you argue this point. Thanks a lot, gentlemen, I’ll listen off the air.

FA: Thanks, sir. Dave Phillips, I guess. How old is the earth? When we were created?

DP: Well, I’d like to respond to a number of those questions, and I think we do have good answers to them. First of all, I don’t believe I took Dr. Oxnard’s work out of context. I didn’t say that he was an evolutionist or a creationist. If we’re doing science, and the scientific facts are the scientific facts, 2 plus 2 are 4, it doesn’t matter if it’s an evolutionist or a creationist saying them. Dr. Oxnard, yes, he is an evolutionist, but he does not agree that the australopithecines walked upright. That was in the context of the conversation, and that was all I was trying to say. And I believe I represented it quite fairly, that Dr. Oxnard does not accept, nor his colleague, Sir Solly Zuckerman, that the australopithecines walked upright, and that was all I was trying to say. I never said that he was not an evolutionist nor that he didn’t believe in evolution. What was the second question?

FA: Well, that did you accept that the Cambrian explosion took place 600 million years ago? How old do you think the….

DP: I accepted the Cambrian explosion took place. When it took place is very difficult to say. Creationists… there are some creationists that believe the universe is quite old, some that believe that it’s quite young, but the topic here is did evolution happen, or did creation happen? And the answer is that creation is a far better model than evolution is, and the only reason that evolution is able to stay at the level that it is in our universities is that there are few people that allow the creationists to present our case. And I believe, when our case is presented that it holds up quite well, that we can more than hold our own in our marketplace of ideas.

FA: Dave, when you say creation, you mean… tell me what you mean. At a specific moment in time, a supreme being created human beings. Tell me, what… how does that work?

DP: Well, I can’t say how that works, because now we’re outside of science. We’re dealing with scientific data here and, when you deal with scientific data there is the problem - and this is why I believe this is emotional – that this goes beyond the scope of where science can go. You see, the origin of the universe, and the origin of life, and all living things is a singularity. That happened at one time in the past. And so, the direct methods of science, which is repeatability, testability, and observation, cannot hold true. And so, what we are left with is a secondary kind of science that Dr. McKee and I have to practice when we do paleontology, and that is interpretation of what the data has to say.

FA: I understand. How old do you think the earth is, from your point of view?

DP: I think it could be quite young, but I don’t know exactly.

FA: Young means approximately what?

DP: I don’t know exactly, but I think it could be quite young. I couldn’t give you… I’m not an expert in that area.

FA: I mean, millions or years, or thousands of years, or what?

DP: I don’t know. There’s some data, for example, on radio halos that’s been published that shows the granites, the original basement rocks, may have come into existence quite rapidly. For example, polonium, which is a radioactive element, there are several isotopes of polonium that have short half-lives of only minutes, hours, or even days.

FA: I understand, I’m just trying to get a ballpark from you before we move on. Okay, Jeff McKee, from your point of view now. You’ve heard the theory of evolution roundly criticized. The intermediate steps are not there, you’ve heard it criticized as unscientific.

JM: Well, I’ve just explained the very science of it, that we have a theory that has been tested by the fossil record, by genetics, by comparative anatomy and so on. What I think would be useful for our listening audience at this stage is to get away from science just for a moment and define what creationism is, because it can mean a lot of different things to a lot of different people, and we were just verging on that discussion where we were asking Dave Phillips to tell us how old the earth is. Now see, there’s a spectrum of creationists. I get friends coming up to me and say “I go to church and therefore I’m a creationist,” but it’s not quite so simple. It’s more complex once you start to think about the issues at hand. Now, on the one end of the spectrum are the young earth creationists, who hold that the earth is only about 10,000 years old, and Dave Phillips represents the Institute for Creation Research, which does hold that position. Further along the spectrum are old earth creationists. These are individuals who accept the old age of the earth - which goes against a very literalistic interpretation of Genesis I - but they accept the old age of the earth, but for one reason or another, perhaps due to discomfort with the idea of evolution, deny the science of evolution as a cornerstone of biology. And further along the spectrum are the creationists who are by far in the majority of people I know personally, and these are people who accept that God worked through the process of evolution. We could call these evolutionary creationists or you could call them theistic evolutionists, whichever you prefer. These are people who accept scripture, they accept their God, they accept their religion, and they accept the scientific findings as regards evolution. They do not see a conflict between the two, in which case there is no argument, there is no debate among evolutionists and creationists. As an example of one of these individuals, the Pope. The Pope is someone who I’m sure we know knows the scriptures inside and out and maintains a strong faith in God, yet the Pope and the Vatican accept that evolution is a valid theory. So, where one places oneself along that spectrum defines what you mean by creationism, and I would suggest that… Dave Phillips hasn’t told us how old the earth is, but certainly the organization he’s representing today holds that the earth is only 10,000 years old and that is, in terms of the scientific world, a position which would have to deny not only evolutionary biology but would also have to deny physics, astronomy, geology, chemistry, and so on. It’s basically an attack on all of science.

FA: Dave Phillips, would you reject the idea of a God-centered evolution, that evolution could have occurred as directed by a supreme being? You would not agree with that?

DP: I would absolutely reject that.

FA: And the Institute for Creation Research, and you do represent them here today, says that the earth is 10,000 years old. Is that accurate?

DP: Within ballpark parameters, that would be the case. I’m not, you know, I’m not an expert in physics and neither is Dr. McKee…

JM: That is correct….

DP: …and so, you know, for him to say that he knows how old the earth is would also be an assumption on his part. For example, if you look at what geology textbooks – and I teach geology at the Master’s College – you look at what geology textbooks written by evolutionists were saying in the 1960s and 50s, and I can produce this information if need be, they were saying that absolutely the earth was 2 billion years old. In the 1940s and 30s they were saying that it was only hundreds of millions of years old, and this was absolute. I don’t think anyone can say with certainty that they know for a fact how old the earth is, and if they do they’re only fooling themselves, and they’re not doing good science, because the date has changed dramatically through the years with basically the same methods. And there’s a lot of evidence to support that this data may be inaccurate, it may be wrong, so we have to be very careful on that. And that’s why I’m emphasizing here that the age of the earth is only a side note. The true issue here is – has evolution taken place on a macro scale, or is creation a better a model when we look at the fossil record, when we look at thermodynamics, when we look at the origin of life? And I think that we can definitely make our case.

FA: Now, let me say, we have just four minutes left here and obviously we’re not going to get to all of our callers today, the lines remain full. Maybe we will come back and have part two. But callers, I’ll get to a couple of you who have been holding for a while, and I’ll ask you to be very very brief and very very concise. Let’s go to John. Hi, John, thanks for holding.

John: Hi. I have a couple of comments for your creationist guest. The age of the earth is absolutely crucial in this question. If the earth is 10,000 years old then evolution could not have taken place, there hasn’t been enough time. All the evidence from a great variety of disciplines suggests that the earth is very old indeed. The comment I have for the creationist is…. Let’s see if I understand him correctly. Does he really expect me to believe that the biological world and refutes the second law of thermodynamics, the increase in entropy over time, is that… am I right in saying that’s his position?

FA: Dave?

DP: I’m not understanding your question…

J: Do you believe the biological world violates the law of entropy?

DP: Absolutely not! I never implied that or said that.

J: You actually did say that, you said that you could not have biological organisms….

DP: Excuse me, what I did say, and I’ll repeat it, I said the origin of life by naturalistic processes would violate the second law of thermodynamics. That’s exactly what I said.

J: I don’t think that’s true at all. You actually said you cannot have more complex structures coming into existence by themselves without an outside agency. Is that true?

DP: I’m talking about the universe as a whole…

J: I’m talking about the solar system….

DP: No wait, let me clarify please. The naturalistic process that we see through time is for systems to become less complex….

J: Only if there’s not an input of energy into the system. The input of energy into the system in the solar system is the sun. You can have more complex structures emerging if you have a net increase of energy coming into the system. There’s no violation of the law of entropy….

DP: Excuse me. Let me respond to that, please. Let me respond to that, please. This is a fallacy. Because we have sunlight pouring into a system does not create complexity. It’s a necessary condition but not a sufficient condition. A bull in a china shop performs work but he does not create complexity. Yes, you can pour raw energy into the system, but this will not create complexity. If you believe that, go sit out on the beach for some time and see if you become more complex with those sun rays beating down on you. You won’t. What you’ll be is a corpse on the beach. You must have a conversion mechanism system such as photosynthesis, you must be able to convert that chemical energy into useable energy. And further, you must have a plan, a blueprint, such as DNA, in order to take that energy and convert it. Just pouring raw energy ….

JM: May I interupt?

DP: … into a system does not refute the second law of thermodynamics.

JM: Yeah, you need an energy dissipating structure and that’s exactly what life is. That is why life does not violate the second law of thermodynamics.

DP: I never said that life did violate the second law of thermodynamics…

JM: John is absolutely right in what he called….

DP: It is the origin of life, Dr. McKee. Where did that complexity arise from? This is the question that you can’t answer. If you could, you could go into the lab right now and create life by naturalistic process. You haven’t been able to do it, after trying for 150 years.

FA: And we’re out of time, and I want to thank both of you for being here today. David Phillips, professor of earth science and geology at the master’s college, a lecturer for the Institute of Creation Research. Thanks for being with us from California today.

DP: Thank you very much for having me. I appreciate it very much.

FA: Jeff McKee, associate professor of anthropology at the Ohio State University. His new book is called The Riddled Chain: Chance, Coincidence and Chaos in Human Evolution. Thank you for being here as well.

JM: Thank you for having me, and thank Dave Phillips for calling from California.

FA: Thanks for all of you callers. To Rochelle Ansack [?] at the controls. News next, on your source for NPR news. Intelligent talk. 820 WOSU am, Columbus.

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