Creationist’s Nightmare: An Evolutionary Anatomy Lesson
Don’t expect to see Mike Huckabee curling up with this book
YOUR INNER FISH: A JOURNEY INTO THE 3.5-BILLION-YEAR HISTORY OF THE HUMAN BODY
By Neil Shubin
Pantheon, 229 pages, $24
When the renowned paleontologist Neil Shubin announced in 2006 that he’d discovered an ancient fossil with an uncanny resemblance to a “missing link” between fish and land-dwellers, creationists responded with all the fury of pissed off-apes. Jumping, hooting and thumping their chests, they denounced the discovery as secular “propaganda” and trashed Dr. Shubin’s creature, named Tiktaalik, as nothing more than a desperate, pro-evolution publicity stunt.
“With the continued invalidation of the corrupt theory of neo-Darwinism in the eyes of many, and school boards nationwide taking a favorable look at intelligent design, it is not surprising that evolutionists are scrambling to enact damage control,” wrote Frank Sherwin, a “creation scientist,” in a news post for the Institute for Creation Research shortly after the story of Tiktaalik landed on the front page of The New York Times. “Enter an alleged ‘missing link’ that some are saying reveals one of the greatest changes in the field of zoology.”
Now, nearly two years later, Dr. Shubin has come out with his riposte, a book titled Your Inner Fish that is bound to send his anti-evolutionist foes into fits of pre-primate rage. This isn’t because Your Inner Fish is a particularly strident or polemical work. Written in a clear, patient voice, it keeps its God-delusion comments to a minimum while somehow managing to go 200 pages without ever mentioning the E-word. (Instead of “evolution,” Dr. Shubin uses Darwin’s more delicate term, “descent with modification.”)
But for those readers still raging over the idea that humans might be descended from “lower order animals” (like, say, monkeys), Dr. Shubin’s book suggests an even more terrifying possibility: It offers a rigorously empirical exploration of how humans evolved from microbes into men and women, with some vital contributions from jellyfish, sharks, flies and, of course, Tiktaalik-like hybrids along the way.
Indeed, if there’s one message of Your Inner Fish, it’s the “exceptional similarities” between creatures as distant and disparate-seeming as Homo sapiens and, say, Paracoccus denitrificans, a humble bacteria bearing a remarkable resemblance to the mitochondria buried in all human cells.
As Dr. Shubin writes, “All animals are the same but different. … We may not look much like sea anemones and jellyfish, but the recipe that builds us is a more intricate version of the one that builds them.”
Or, in practical terms: Don’t expect to see Mike Huckabee curling up with this book.
FORTUNATELY FOR DR. Shubin, there are still enough adherents of reason and science to appreciate Your Inner Fish’s surprisingly titillating evolutionary anatomy lesson. Part research memoir, part biology course, the book begins with the author’s quest to find one of the long-sought prizes of paleontology, a fossil that bridges “one of the great transitions in the history of life: the invasion of land by fish.” For nearly a decade he dedicated himself to this search, spending his winters doing research and his summers digging in the Canadian Arctic while fending off polar bears and praying the food supply wouldn’t run out. Who knew paleontology could be such a manly sport?
Then, in 2004, while excavating a mound of 375 million-year-old rocks on Ellesmere Island, Dr. Shubin and his team stumbled on their fossil El Dorado: a strange hybrid animal that seemed to straddle several species. With the scales on its back and its clear fin webbing, the creature had the definite traits of a fish; but with its flat head and neck, as well as its incipient wrist and arm bones, it looked uncannily like an early land-living tetrapod. Next Page >
During my school years, one classmate had scars on the side of his neck: He had been born with gill slits; most of us lose our gill slits in the fetal stage, but not this young man.
Another classmate had a circular scar where his tail had been cut off.
In ancient days, perhaps as infants both would have been left to die of exposure. But in near-modern times, before cosmetic surgery, perhaps they and similarly endowed childen would have gone through life with their gill slits and tails and, on the female side, extra nipples.
While I wouldn't wish a childhood with gill slits on anyone, maybe, just maybe, having a few young men with tails and gill slits walking the streets would shake the theological underpinnings of the creationist crowd.
Or, perhaps we should bring back carnival sideshows!
During my school years, one classmate had scars on the side of his neck: He had been born with gill slits; most of us lose our gill slits in the fetal stage, but not this young man.
Another classmate had a circular scar where his tail had been cut off.
In ancient days, perhaps as infants both would have been left to die of exposure. But in near-modern times, before cosmetic surgery, perhaps they and similarly endowed childen would have gone through life with their gill slits and tails and, on the female side, extra nipples.
While I wouldn't wish a childhood with gill slits on anyone, maybe, just maybe, having a few young men with tails and gill slits walking the streets would shake the theological underpinnings of the creationist crowd.
Or, perhaps we should bring back carnival sideshows!
John F - I can see you're not a zoologist. People don't have, nor did they ever have, "gill slits" - those are reserved for fish. However, people sadly sometimes have during their embryological development events called mutations. A child born with hole(s) in the neck ("gill slits") is due to a mutation. Ditto with the alleged "tail" - which is nothing like a true tail that has nerve, muscle and bone. During embryonic development a mutation may cause the neural ridges to overlap forming a crude "tail" - or a mutation may cause the neural ridges to stop short (spina bifida). Shame on the doctor that tells the parents they produced a throwback to the fish stage! People have always been people. Fish have always been fish, just as the creation model states.
The unscientific macroevolution model ("descent with modification") says we have fish in our ancestry. Evolutionist A.G. Fisher said in 2002, “One of the most difficult problems in evolutionary paleontology has been the almost abrupt appearance of the major animal groups—classes and phyla—in full-fledged form, in the Cambrian and Ordovician periods. This must reflect a sudden acquisition of skeletons by the various groups, in itself a problem.”
See? Fish have never been in our ancestry. The "four-legged fish" Ichthyostega is not the "missing link" between marine and land animals, but rather one of several short-lived "experiments“ according to evolutionists from Cambridge & Uppsala Universities (Nature, September 2005, & Physorg.com 9/05). Evolutionist John A. Long said in '95, "Yet the transition from spineless invertebrates to the first backboned fishes is still shrouded in mystery, and many theories abound..."
These quotes should shake the atheistic underpinnings of the evolutionary crowd.
Windarr- I can see that your point of view tends toward creationist and/or intelligent design. Your argument about when the notocord/spinal cord developed (spontaneously?) is flawed in that we have yet to find fossils of every living thing out there- partly because of the delicate fossilization process and partly because the search area is so vast and there are so many parts unavailable to search. Of course you can come up with arguments to dispute the above...however, it is much more difficult to answer the following questions:
1.) Why is it that all living things (and even virus particles) are based on DNA/RNA Adenine, cytosine, guanine, thymine, and uracil? Why is the main "coinage" system of ALL cells ATP?
2.) Why is there such a conservation of amino acid sequences in key enzymes that breakdown glucose? For that matter, why is the usage of glucose so universal? ... and for those cells with mitochondria- why is there such a conservation of amino acid sequences in electron transport molecules embedded in the cristae of mitochondria- like Cytochrome C? Why is oxygen the last electron acceptor of ALL mitochondria? Why not some other periodic element?
3.) How do you explain the universality of HOX genes?
4.) How come bone structure in a chimp and man are so similar? For that matter, how come the same cells (osteoclasts and osteoblasts) are used to reorganize bone in man and FISH?
I could go on and on... but these questions cannot simply be discarded as - well God made them that way- in his/her infinite wisdom. Sorrry I cannot live with such shallow answers.
I liked the review of Shubin's book. It reminded me of T.S.
Eliot's line, "I should have been a pair of ragged claws,
scuttling across the floors of silent seas." Actually, Eliot, you were once, a long time ago.
I'm just passing through but I noticed that Steve Levin claimed that Windarr's argument (about when the notocord/ spinal cord developed) is flawed because fossils of every living thing out there have not been found. Is that not evidence for spontaneity? Do we first really need to find or know everything before reaching a good conclusion? Can't 'Beyond a reasonable doubt' suffice in the meantime? There is certainly no evidence of transitions for any of the spinal cords we have found! Steve then challenges: 1.) Why is it that all living things are based on DNA/RNA...? 2.) Why is there such a conservation of amino acid sequences...? 3.) How do you explain the universality of HOX genes? 4.) How come bone structure in a chimp and man are so...? Well, I don't know whether Steve believes in a God (a lot of scientists do) but he might be able to imagine being a god, and at that point might find himself wondering why man would require him to use different materials and systems to enable his living creations to interact with the commonalities in the environments? Would it be unreasonable of him to give a heart to fish, birds, mammals and other animals which he might make even though they may not actually be related? In my garage, I have a hocky stick, an old tennis racket, a chair and a bed post. All are wooden, shaped by tools, and painted. The four questions which Steve poses above imply that their commonalities necessitate that the DNA/RNA, amino acids, HOX genes, and bones all resulted from a common process (evolution). Would you make the same assumption with the four items in my garage? Is a simple, "No" truly a 'shallow answer'? Readers ought to check out AnswersInGenesis.org and ICR.org, not only for the scientific facts, but for good clear logic as well. Cheers
Ms. Ratner has loosed a disclosure of epochal journalistic moment. She found Neil Shubin
"...praying the food supply wouldn’t run out.." during one of his scientific sorties.
Neil Shubin praying? Scandal!