Creationism - Main - TinPotUniversities-Bristol

Meet Britain's Tin Pot Universities: Number 1, Bristol. By Roger Stanyard

Stuart Burgess, Professor of Mechanical Breakdowns

Stuart Burgess BSc, PhD, CEng, MIMechE is a Professor of Design and Nature in the Department of Mechanical Engineering (he is head of the department) at the University of Bristol in the UK. Bristol is one of Britain’s better universities (it’s in the Russell League of the top 17, but is not Golden Triangle, top 6, establishment).

Not in my view, though. I’m a consumer and this place stinks in its advertising and promotion. I wouldn’t pay to do a course here if it were the last higher education establishment in the world as a result.

Burgess is apparently a Baptist and, according to the nutters Answers in Genesis, is a member of Buckingham Chapel in Bristol. This is described as an Evangelical Baptist church. He also holds a diploma in Theology from the London Reformed Baptist Seminary (part of the Metropolitan Tabernacle). However, I have no idea what status this holds.

At one stage in his career Burgess world on the solar array panel deployment mechanism of the European Space Agency’s earth observation satellite Envisat. His first degree and PhD are both from Brunel University.

Impressed I am not.

A summary bio of Burgess can be found at www.men.bris.ac.uk/contact/acstaff/scb.html (on the University’s web site). It lists a number of academic papers he has authored or co-authored but entirely fails to mention his religious publications. To me, that is frightening. As a religious fundamentalist, Burgess is an outspoken critic of mainstream science but the site is utterly silent on the matter. Perhaps this is because his pseudo-science has been pulled to pieces.

See here, www.freerepublic.com/forum/a3835f6e91ba4.htm, for evidence that Burgess’s academic references are being censored. In 1999 Burgess had a paper published in AiG’s "technical journal", Creation ex Nihilo (volume 12, issue 2). The paper was called "Critical Characteristics and the Irreducible Knee Joint". (You can read it at www.trueorigin.org/knee.asp). And it states that he was on the academic payroll at Bristol and he drew upon the expertise of a fellow academic there, Dr John Davis, to produce it. Davis was then in the Department of Civil Engineering.

There is no reference to the paper anywhere on the University’s web site. The web site is being used to advertise the University.

One wonders why, in a major British university Burgess couldn’t find a biologist to help him. It takes little guessing, though, why the paper is not listed on the University’s web site.

Pity Burgess didn’t get help from someone that knew what they are talking about. I’ve read the paper and it is raving bonkers. It is wrong from the very first sentence. He doesn’t even appear to know the very basics of the Theory of Evolution. There are howlers all over the paper. I almost cringed reading it. The first sentence states that "according to the theory of evolution, natural mechanisms such as limb joints have evolved one characteristic at a time by random and rare genetic mistakes, called mutations."

The Theory of Evolution says nothing of the sort. It’s not the Theory of Evolution by Mutation. It’s the Theory of Evolution by Natural Selection. It’s the latter which gives rise to evolution. It doesn’t say that mutations are genetic mistakes. It doesn’t say they are rare. It doesn’t say natural mechanisms evolve characteristics one at a time. That’s just the howlers in the first sentence! He doesn’t even understand what genetic drift is.

Yet to this day Burgess is publicly pushing he belief that the knee joint demonstrates irreducible complexity. The whole argument immediately falls to pieces because Burgess does not understand that multiple traits can develop in parallel.

To me, the university is failing in its duty to point out that Burgess publishes in crackpot journals; Burgess’s religious-pseudo-science is so bad that no academic journal which uses peer review would touch it was the end of the proverbial barge-pole.

Indeed, it is so bad, the University appears to censor it from its web site.

The AiG publication doesn’t involve peer review because you have to be a creationist to both write for it and review its papers. As far as I am aware no technical or academic journal in the world makes the preposterous demand that you have to agree with the owners’ religion opinions before submission or if you peer review for it. It’s a journal for severe crackpots.

Moreover, given Burgess’s crapola on the Theory of Evolution, his paper wasn’t even checked by his fundamentalist pals. AiG’s status in the scientific world can be judged by the fact that its head is a former school teacher with no more than a first degree.

Burgess claims that Modern Cosmology and the Theory of Evolution are no more than "ploys by Satan to divert man from belief in God and a literal interpretation of Genesis".

Burgess is author of Hallmarks by Design, published by Day One Publications (2000). He rehashes his crapola about knee joints in this as well; see the extract at www.e-n.org.uk/1154-Hallmarks-of-Design.htm.

But wait, Day One Publications is not a publisher of scientific books; it publishes religious books. You should now smell a rat. This is not a science text book. Day One is the publishing arm of the Lord’s Day Observance Society and publishes work by "leading evangelicals", not leading mechanical engineers.

But, of course, Burgess is deeply involved in the creationist movement and its attempts to undermine science. Lets have a look at what he thinks about physics, for example:

According to the Brights movement in the UK, Burgess claims that "There is a case for arguing that Satan has deliberately made modern theoretical physics complicated in order to blind people to the truth of the origins of the universe."

Well, don’t bother applying to Bristol University to do physics when it has appointed a professor that tells you the subject matter is evil.

Now, one of the most famous graduates of Bristol University, where Burgess works, was the Nobel Prize winning theoretical physicist, Paul Dirac. Dirac studied electrical engineering and mathematics at Bristol.

The Brights went on the point out to the University of Bristol that Burgess was suggesting that Dirac was in league with the devil. The Brights also pointed out that Burgess had claimed that he could prove that both Darwin and Einstein were wrong. Burgess believes that the Theory of Evolution is an "Absurd and shallow deception"

Well, I am still waiting for this mechanical engineer to prove that Einstein was wrong and the theory of evolution is crap. Here is the evidence from Burgess listed on the University’s web site:

(Long, isn’t it?)

Here are the list of papers in peer reviewed academic journals in physics and biology where the professor has demonstrated the evidence:

(Long, isn’t it?)

Here is the list of nominations for Burgess for the Nobel Prize for showing that the two key fundamentals of science are wrong:

(long, isn’t it?)

Here is a list of Burgess’s qualifications in biology:

(long, isn’t it?)

You can immediately spot Burgess’s kookery here. It’s the word "deception". Its protagonists deceive, according to Burgess. Burgess doesn’t believe it so he smears by innuendo those that do. It’s the old fundamentalist tricks at work again.

Still, Burgess claims against science don’t stop there. He believes that the theory of evolution is the latest ploy that Satan is using to encourage man to rebel against God (from Origin of Man). That suggests that Bristol University in its entirety is in league with the devil, including the payroll department which provides his monthly salary payment and the students paying for courses there.

Burgess appears to be associated with the Creation Science Movement based in Portsmouth, as well as AiG. For example, in 2002 he, alongside David Rosevear, led a creation conference in Bristol attended by approximately 70 people. At that conference Burgess revealed his position and lied to the audience:

"Dr Burgess reminded us that opposition to biblical truth is as strong today as ever, as the proponents of evolution both deny creation and try to prevent it being taught in schools." They don’t; the issue is about teaching creationism in science lessons in state schools. Moreover, old earth creationists often accept the theory of evolution. (See www.evangelical-times.org/ETNews/July02/jul02n16.htm for Burgess’s statement.)

Burgess is also author of "the Origin of Man" also published by Day One Publications. Interestingly, the forward to this book was written by Professor Andrew Sims, Emeritus (meaning retired) professor of psychiatry at the University of Leeds and past President of the Royal College of Psychiatrists. Sounds impressive doesn’t it? But Sims is a fellow hard line creationist.

This looks to be vanity publishing by another name. It’s standard fundamentalist practice. Use your own publishers and pals and keep well away from mainstream publishers.

One wonders precisely why Burgess and his pals got a psychiatrist to forward the book rather than a biologist. Presumably because virtually no biologist would touch such a book with the end of a barge-pole. Not least because Burgess is a mechanical engineer.

Here’s an example from the book of how Burgess smears with innuendo. Talking about information theory and evolution, Burgess states quite categorically that "Atheists have often been asked to give examples of where there has been an increase in information by naturalistic means. However, they have not been able to give any credible examples. (See footnotes for the debunking of this.)

Note that his innuendo is that people who do not agree with his religious opinions are atheists. This comment is not just a matter of complete lack of intellectual honesty, its lying and in breach of the ninth commandment. But it is bog standard fundamentalist practice. It remains, though, a deeply insulting and arrogant comment to scientists (which neither Burgess nor Sims are), many Christians, other believers in religion, agnostics, atheists and the indifferent who do not accept Burgess’s religious extremism.

Burgess’s underlying proposition, though, is that anything which disagrees with his opinions on religion must be wrong. He’s entitled to his views but, like most fundamentalists, he wants to push them onto others. Burgess was one of the signatories in the 2002 letter to Estelle Morris.

Moreover, Burgess seems to have mixed up his professional position with his religious dogma. For example the book Origin of Man made great play on the fact that Burgess had been appointed to a professorship. Yet the book is a compendium of half understood hocus pocus on subjects that Burgess is out of his depth on. By all accounts it is not an intelligent book (see www.the-brights.net/forums/forum/index.php?showtopic=2654&st=0 for a discussion that pulls it to pieces).

I’m not a scientist but instantly recognise that Burgess basically does not know what he is talking about when it comes to the Theory of Evolution and I have grave doubts as to whether he understand information theory at all. As a scientist Burgess is a rank amateur crackpot.

One wonders how far the academic staff at Bristol wince when they hear Burgess’s name. I certainly would have doubts about taking courses at Bristol University given that it has, as a head of department and professor, a world-class windbag. This man is mind-numbing in his banality. One wonders what other religious extremists Bristol has amongst its academic staff.

I’m all for academic freedom from such people and the institutions that employ and promote them - the more so because he evangelises his opinions big time.

Burgess was one of the speakers at AiG’s 2006 "Creation Without Compromise" conference at Swanwick in Derbyshire. It ever there was complete proof that Burgess is a crackpot, this is it.

Burgess is up to he neck in trying to push his religious opinions into science education. For example, he has been touring schools in Northern Ireland (see http://www.bbc.co.uk/northernireland/religion/sundaysequence/archive-churchstories.shtml – it’s a BBC audio where Burgess spouts off his fundamentalist views) claiming that the world is only 6,000 years old. Pity the poor children applying to enter Bristol University who have committed scientific suicide by listening to Burgess. That’s before they get there!

Does Bristol’s School of Biological Sciences, Department of Archaeology and Anthropology and Earth Sciences Department now provide remedial education to science students from Northern Ireland that have been lectured to the head of their Department of Mechanical Engineering?

Does the University reject potential physics students because it’s professors (i.e. Burgess) tell them that the subject is nonsense?

Or is Bristol University rejecting applications from Northern Ireland because the students have got poor A level grades as a result of listening to their Head of Mechanical Engineering?

Does the University accept that its Head of Engineering is telling school children that what they are being taught in biology, physics, geology and geography lessons is wrong? If so, has this reflected in any changes to the University’s admissions policies and procedures.

Given that Dr Burgess has been active in Northern Ireland, what specification action has the University taken in respect to examination grades in biology, physics, geology and geography from affected students from the province.

Has the University discussed this with Martin McGuiness?

Is the university concerned that its Head of Mechanical Engineering has been trying to influence both the national curriculum in schools and directly teach within schools his religious opinions which may result in failure of pupils to gain entrance to other departments of the University?

Burgess claims that his reason for proselytising to children is that, on the day of judgement, people will not make the excuse that have been taught the Theory of Evolution. Basically Burgess is telling children that they have to make a choice, based on fear, between religion and science. Accept the Theory of Evolution and you will go to hell.

Burgess is determined to get his religious opinions into schools. Is the University prepared to accept the consequences or rejecting 18 year old students on the basis that a professor, less qualified than they are, dismisses subject after subject as being wrong?

Can the university demonstrate that the professor is better qualified than they are in such subjects as physics, biology, geology, astronomy, geography and archaeology?

Does the university consider that the professors paper in AiG journals reflect a professional understanding by the professor of biology? Do the academics in other departments respect his opinions on physics and biology?

Nice man, great educator, brilliant scientist. If this is the standard of intellectual ability at Bristol University, don’t waste you effort trying to get in. and watch who you employ from there. Bristol has given security of tenure to a member of its academic staff who’s basic tenet is that if science contradicts his religious opinions, then science is wrong. This places Bristol on a par with the Bob Jones University and Patrick Henry College in the United States.

Right now it looks to be developing into nothing better than a tin-pot bible college.

I conclude that Burgess is a key mover and shaker in a movement out to wreck education in the UK from top to bottom. His opinions on religion are wholly incompatible with the concept of liberal education, science, rationality, modernity. Combined these are the underlying ethos of the very concept of a university.

The sad side is that, in his mainstream academic work, Burgess (and, to some extent, his co-fundamentalist Andy McIntosh) are looking at "design" in nature to apply it to engineering design. The irony is that natural design is a misnomer. The creationists deny it because Goddidit and the rest of us who care to consider it believe that form and function was caused by natural selection (with an element of trial and error, perhaps).

Burgess is author of another Answers in Genesis paper, "The beauty of the peacock tail and the problems with the theory of sexual selection." This was published in AiG’s TJ Magazine, Volume 15, issue 2, August 2001. He was on the University’s payroll at the time.

Burgess claims that "according to the theory of sexual selection, the peacock tail has gradually evolved because the peahen selects beautiful males for mating. However, there is no satisfactory explanation of how the sexual selection cycle can start or why the peahen should prefer beautiful features. In addition, there is irreducible complexity in both the physical structure of the feather and in the beautiful patterns."

He then goes on to say that "Even though this theory (sexual selection) has always been controversial, most evolutionists now believe that it can explain how beautiful features could evolve from nothing."

Except that without exception they don’t. I am not aware of any scientist anywhere ever saying that the theory of evolution explains something evolves from nothing. The statement is plain damn wrong. Features evolve from other features, not from nothing. Or is the mad professor trying to debunk another subject, Abiogenesis, by the back door?

A friend of mine, Timothy Chase, active in the Debunkcreation group, has added the following analysis of Burgess’s crapola on mutations. The points are in ascending order of significance, point five basically pulling Burgess to pieces:

If you are talking about a "point mutation" in a gene, it may be silent -- or it may severely disrupt the protein or proteins which the gene codes for (e.g., by resulting in a stop codon) -- or it may be somewhere in between. And there we are just talking about point mutations -- in this case, a substitution. An insertion or deletion may be far more drastic inasmuch as it results in a shift in the reading frame. But that is with point mutations in coding sequences.

2. Alternatively, a far more drastic mutation is a chromosomal rearrangement. It turns out that the hotspots for chromosomal rearrangements which result in cancer today are the very same hotspots which resulted in chromosomal rearrangements during mammalian evolution from the earliest mammals to mice and men -- and while there are only about 400 of them. Among the one-tenth of one percent of newborns which have these rearrangements, fifty percent are clinically significant, which means that the other fifty percent aren't.

3. Regardless of how much more likely deleterious mutations are than beneficial mutations, if beneficial mutations occur, in time, they will win out as they will give those who have them and the descendants who express them an advantage over the rest of the population, and this advantage will tend to translate into having more descendants who have even more descendants. (However, there is the distinct possibility that a given "beneficial" mutation will be lost multiple times before it becomes fixed in a population, that is carried by all extant members.)

4. Mutations in regulatory sequences (particularly promoter regions) are less likely to be deleterious than mutations in coding sequences -- since they won't actually break the protein that is expressed, but will modify the "when," the "where" and the "how much" of its expression. But at the same time, mutations in the promoter regions may have fairly significant effects. For example, the lengthening of the bones in the bat limb has been traced back to a single gene --Bone Morphogenic Protein 2 -- and changes to the promoter region have been implicated. With a similar mutation preventing the expression of a protein which induces cell death the webbing between the bones, you have the batwing itself, and probably an animal capable of gliding from tree to tree.

5. In a couple of ways, it just doesn't make sense to speak of deleterious and beneficial mutations as if they were two totally separate things. Many mutations are neither silent, nor strongly beneficial nor strongly detrimental. Many are what are called "near-neutral." (See Ohta, a student of Kimura -- who originated the neutral theory of molecular evolution in 1968.) They may be slightly detrimental, but if the population and consequent gene pools are small enough, they will be largely invisible to natural selection. Moreover, what may be slightly detrimental in one context (gene duplication, for example) may be beneficial in another. And if the population in which a slightly detrimental mutation (such as a gene duplication, segmental duplication, chromosomal rearrangement, or polyploidy) occurs is small enough, as the population expands, additional mutations and gradually increasing selection may shape the original, slightly detrimental mutation into something quite positive -- this is the essential idea behind Ohno's theory regarding the origins of genomic complexity.

Tim also subsequently added that the evolution of the limbs ( or circulatory system -- as in the starfish, or blood-clotting mechanism, etc.) was a gradual process, but it only needed to be a gradual process. Morpheological development during the growth of the organism is coordinated, but this coordination during morpheological development also means that it is only a few key variables which have to change for there to be coordinated evolution. This is why both Lenny and I emphasized regulatory genes.

Michael Suttkuss, also in the same Yahoo group, points out that every human on the planet has several mutations (changes from either parent), so they aren't at all rare. (Roger Stanyard – I believe it is about 100 mutations per person.)

Lenny Flank, group owner, adds on the issue of evolving one at a time that "This is a very common error made by creationuts --- they seem to think that every anatomical characteristic is controlled by one gene, and that for a structure like a knee to evolve, each and every one of these characteristics must appear, one at a time, with its own gene.

'T'ain't so.

Apparently the creationuts are utterly pig-ignorant about such things as HOX genes, regulatory genes, and pleiotropic genes.

Troy Britain of Talk Origins is dismissive of Burgess’s claims about the human knee joint (see www.talkorigins.org/origins/feedback/mar02.html):

"From my reading of the article it seems to be highly flawed especially in its almost total lack of discussion on the comparative anatomies of living non-human apes, extinct hominids and H. sapiens. This lack of attention to comparative anatomy (and physiology) is typical of anti-evolutionists, leading them to continually talk about the anatomy/physiology of various organisms as if they exist in a vacuum (examples: THE woodpecker or THE bombardier beetle). They focus on some extreme example of organ or system in a particular species as if it is totally unique to that species. The fact is that when one looks at other closely related species one usually finds that there are variations on the extreme example that the anti-evolutionists have focused upon. For instance the bombardier beetle that anti-evolutionists often cite is just one species of a whole group of beetles (family Carabidae) many of which have some variation on a chemical defense mechanism, using the same basic chemicals (which exist in many beetles in varying amounts), but used in differing ways. The specific example that anti-evolutionists cite sprays an explosive mixture out of its abdomen in a fairly well aimed stream at its attackers, however there are other Carabid beetles that spray with less accurate aim, and others that merely excrete bad tasting chemicals out of their abdomens when attacked. There is a whole spectrum from fairly simple to fairly complex defense mechanisms. Anti-evolutionists only talk about the more complex variant.

This discussion of the human knee is another example of this sort of argument in a vacuum.

While I am not an expert in the comparative anatomies of the living non-human apes and humans, as far as I am aware there is no material difference between them. That is, every bone, muscle, ligament, tendon, and cartilage in the human knee has its corresponding representative in the knee of chimpanzees and the other great apes. Yes they are shaped somewhat differently. Yes they are proportioned differently. But as far as I know all the same parts are there.

As for fossil hominids, the knees of more advanced types like H. erectus (which are either "fully human" or "just apes" depending on what anti-evolutionist you talk to) seem to be virtually identical to those of H. sapiens. As for the knees of the more primitive species of Homo (H. habilis) and the australopithecines these become increasingly like those of living non-human apes the farther back in time one goes. Exactly the sort of thing one would predict if humans evolved from an "ape-like" ancestor. The knee of Australopithecus afaresis (which most anti-evolutionists say is "just an ape") retains a number of "ape-like" features but also has characteristics like those of later hominids including H. sapiens. In other words it is an intermediate form in this regard.

See The ICR and Lucy: Bearing False Witness Against Thy Neighbor for some comparative photos, or refer to any good text on human evolution for comparative illustrations. (See also Jim Lippards article at http://web.archive.org/web/20020606103226/www.talkorigins.org/faqs/knee-joint.html on fundamentalists’ fraudulent claims about knee joints.)

Burgess does mention living apes briefly but only to dismiss them as being poor bipedal walkers. However this is a problem for his argument for irreducible complexity (IC), at least as I understand Michael Behe's (the person responsible for the recent popularity of this term) definition of the term, in that while the knees of living non-human apes are slightly different in form, and are not as efficient for use in bipedal walking as those of humans, they do work, and they can walk bipedally. If the ancestor of hominids (bipedal apes including H. sapiens), whose knee was essentially identical to the living non-human apes, could walk bipedally at all, then it would be possible for there to be a selective advantage for any slight modifications in their descendants which lead towards an increase in efficiency of bipedalism.

The human knee seems to me to be a poor example of an IC structure.

Some of Burgess' other arguments just seem nonsensical to me. For example he states:

"The knee joint presents a major challenge to the evolutionist because it is unique, and because there are no intermediate forms of joint between a condylar joint and the other two limb joints found in animals and humans - the ball and socket joint and the pivot joint."

I fail to understand Mr. Burgess' challenge here. Knee joints did not evolve from elbow, shoulder, or hip joints. Rather knee joints have been knee joints since their origin in the first tetrapods. The same applies to the other types of joints. So why would we expect to find "intermediate forms" between them?

It is a curious thing that Behe's principle of IC as an argument for design turns traditional arguments from design on their heads. No longer are those features of organisms that seem perfectly "sculpted" to suit their needs necessarily evidence for design. No longer are the features of organisms which are well designed from an engineering point of view necessarily evidence for design. Now, under Behe's IC principle of design, it doesn't matter how clunky, ungainly, and poorly designed from an engineering point of view something is, it only matters that it is supposedly irreducibly complex.

Apparently the "Designer" under this new design "theory" is a (supernatural) cosmic Rube Goldberg." (Rube Goldberg was an American cartoonist who, according to Wikipedia, "earned lasting fame for his "Rube Goldberg machines" (exceedingly complex devices that perform simple tasks in very indirect and convoluted ways.")

My own comments on Burgess’s paper is as follows:

Burgess states that "since a human characteristic is typically specified by one gene with about 1,000 chemical units of information, it requires many thousands of units of information in the genetic code to specify the essential design information of the four-bar hinge."

Unfortunately human characteristics are not specified by one gene. In general they are frequently and normally specified by multiple genes. Moreover, a single gene can be responsible for several traits; this is called pleiotropy.

He claims that "random gene mutations generally cause malfunctions and suffering in living organisms." They don’t; for the most part they do not cause either malfunctions or sufferings. Most are neutral or mildly deleterious in this respect.

Burgess also omits a key factor that natural selection acts on mutations that are deleterious. This is known as purifying or stabilising selection and is considered to be very common. Wikipedia states that this "lowers the frequency of alleles which have a deleterious effect on the phenotype (that is, lower fitness), until they are eliminated from the population. Purifying selection results in functional genetic features (e.g. protein-coding sequences or regulatory sequences) being conserved over time because of selective pressure against deleterious variants."

He states that "the knee joint presents a major challenge to the evolutionist because it is unique, and because there are no intermediate forms of joint between a condylar joint and the other two limb joints found in animals and humans - the ball and socket joint and the pivot joint."

Unfortunately our arms have not evolved from our legs or vice versa. There is no reason why there should be an intermediate form between the two.

He further adds that "it is interesting to note that some biology books describe the knee joint as a ‘highly modified hinge joint’ implying that the knee must have evolved from the simple pivot joint that exists in the elbow.

As far as I am aware no biologist has ever claimed rear legs have evolved from front legs (and therefore knees from elbows).

"The fact that evolution can in theory evolve characteristics that are non-critical is used by the evolutionist to give the impression that evolution can work. School textbooks often give examples of how a new colour of a creature such as a moth could evolve by mutation, and then say that with many mutations the moth could have evolved from a primitive creature. However, even though the colour of a moth may be important to its survival, the characteristic of colour is nevertheless a trivial one in terms of how it affects the functioning of organs and parts within the moth. Therefore, the example of the evolution of colour by mutation is not an example of evolution at all because no matter how many non-critical characteristics are evolved, they can never change one kind of functioning system into another kind of functioning system."

Camouflage against predators is not a trivial function; it is a vital function, just as the ability to fly or run away from predators is. It’s vital because if it doesn’t work the creature has its internal organisms ruined – they get eaten by the predator. It’s a seriously critical function.

Moreover as one gene mutation can affect several characteristics, there is, technically, no reason why a change in surface colour or pattern can’t affect internal organs – and vice versa.

What Burgess is claiming is that simple functions are trivial and complex functions are critical. Which begs the question as to what is meant by trivial and critical and which are more critical than others. Are the teeth a cat more critical or trivial than its rear knee joint and, if so, what criterion or criteria are used to determine this? Burgess fails to explain this glaring gap in his argument?

Burgess has concluded that evolution that can be identified isn’t evolution at all because it is too simple. Evolution can only exists for complex functions which are likely to be irreducibly complex. But he is also saying that evolution cannot account for complex functions!

I’m afraid that Evolutionary Theory does not distinguish between complex and simple functions the way Burgess claims. It covers both the alleged simple and the alleged complex.

He adds that "there is no doubt that critical characteristics are obscured because evolutionists can only attempt to give trivial examples of evolution such as changes in colour." And the recently published evidence on the evolution of a bat’s wing is not amongst these? Or the school books I learned from years back which used the example of an elephants trunk? Or that of a horse’s hoof? And by what criteria are these trivial?

He’s another convoluted argument from Burgess: "The theory of evolution is analogous to proposing that one can take the engineering drawings of a simple pivot joint used in a motorbike steering wheel and evolve them into the drawings of the steering system of a four-wheeled vehicle. The information on the drawings is equivalent to the genetic code, and random photocopying errors in the information are analogous to mutations. The evolutionist believes that the random photocopying errors will sometimes produce a slightly better system, and that via selection, eventually the steering system of the motorbike will turn into a four-bar hinge and form the steering system of a four-wheeled vehicle!"

Nope, the theory of evolution says nothing of the sort. Mutation and natural selective in itself is not predictive of any future feature. The key factor in eventual form is neither, it’s the environment. The theory predicts that organisms will evolve to adapt to changing conditions in the environment. Natural selection, which is basically the product of an insufficient food supply, rigorously selects appropriate mutations and rejects those that are not. There is no such mechanism for either inducing random variations in repeated photocopying of an engineering drawing and then rigorously filtering out the vast majority of them.

Moreover, the engineering drawing analogy is arse about tit. The Theory of natural selection is unpredictive in that it can’t be used to predict the overall, in total, features of future animals. There is a high degree of randomness in development and, moreover, there is an external variable which is not predicted by the theory. It’s called the environment.

Put another way, just as repeated photocopying of the aforementioned engineering drawing won’t produce a drawing of the mechanism for 4W drive car, the theory of evolution won’t define all the features of a future organism.

Moreover, the evidence seems to increasingly suggest that the genetic information including regulatory genes is itself facilitative of implementing changes through certain mutations. In other words, some mutations within parts of the genetic code are likely to have much bigger impacts that others. That implies it has a selective capability which contradicts the simplistic concept that evolution is just a product of random mutations and natural selection.

To make matters more complex mutations are reversible.

Moreover, the analogy between engineering drawings (and also operating instructions for a complex system like an aircraft) and the human genome is fallacious. Burgess just does not understand basic genetics. The genome is part of the human body, not an external description or set of instructions. It’s basically a set of self-replicating chemicals which generate growth and form by chemical reactions. It’s akin to using yeast to produce bread or beer; its generative not descriptive.

It’s not the recipe, nor the description, nor the instructions – it’s part of the ingredients.

Put another way, A DNA string is a structure, it is extremely complex and is not completely robust under all circumstances, including dividing and replication; that lack of absolute robustness throughout the string is what allows mutations to happen. Environmental factors alone thus ensure that it cannot be completely robust and there are clearly other factors which account for this.

Burgess also claims that the human knee is unique and compares humans to apes. However, entirely absent from this statement is the obvious fact that modern man is not the only ape that has walked upright; there are loads of examples of apes that have knees very similar to what he calls mankind. So, er, what about Neanderthal Man or Homo heidelbergensis or Homo erectus or Australopithecus afarensis.

Burgess can’t keep his religious opinions out of his pseudo-science. He claims that "the human knee joint not only gives evidence of design but it also gives evidence of the infinite power and wisdom of God." One in four runners (including myself in the past) can testify from first hand experience that the human knee does not testify to God’s infinite power and wisdom. Its flaws are a serious problem for us.

Moreover, there is something utterly bogus about Burgess when he claims that "whether gene mutations are random (as atheists believe) or planned (as many theistic evolutionists believe)…."

I don’t know what the reader thinks, but this smacks innuendo and arrogance. The innuendo is that those who do not accept Burgess’s opinions on religion are morally suspect and he is our self-appointed moral superior. I find that to be deeply insulting and distressing and conclude that the man is a complete jerk.

This thinking comes up time and time again with fundies. There are a vast number of believers in the theory of evolution who are Christian, Jewish, Taoist, Buddhist, Hindu, Muslim and so on. (Many mainstream Christians find the views of fundamentalists abhorrent.) Most of us accept that religious belief and belief in the theory of evolution are completely separate issues. One is not dependent on the other.

However, the fundie opinion appears to be that unless you circularly define a "God believer" as someone who doesn't believe in evolution, you must accept that religious belief and evolution are independent

Information theory: Burgess says that Atheists (a Burgess piece of Bollox) have often been asked to give examples of where there has been an increase in information by naturalistic means. However, they have not been able to give any credible examples.

Answer: here are some examples: Polyploidy in fish (Carp v Goldfish), your bread roll at lunch time (domestic wheat is polyploidal), chips (potatoes are polyploidal), cabbage (polyploidal as well) and strawberries. They are all examples that have been bred from diploid equivalents. Polyploidal is common in plants and there are several well know examples in vertebrates including a species of mammal.

Polyploidy is where the number of each chromosome in a species is more than two. In humans we each have two sets of 23 chromosomes – we’re dipolidal – Goldfish, which have four sets are polyploidal. The carp from which it has been bred, has two sets. Thus a goldfish has twice the number of alleles (four at each genetic loci rather than two) of a carp and thus twice as much information in its genetic code.

Polyploidy is recognised in both natural selection (Salamanders and Salmon, for example) and artificial selection and is increasingly recognised as a significant element in evolution. General, domesticated plants such as wheat which have been cross-bred to a polyploidal state are more robust than their diploid ancestors. Current thinking amongst biologists is that most animals and plants are descended at some stage from polyploidal ancestors.

Polyploidy is a big problem for creationists who, I assume, dismiss it on the grounds that it doesn’t add any extra information (in a non-Information theory sense). However, polyploidal organisms, it appears, tend to evolve over time into diploid organisms because the duplicated chromosomes become differentiated over time.

Duplicates genes that arise from the shift from diploid to polyploidal species can mutate and evolve in their own right and, indeed, interact with other duplicated genes. There is increasing evidence that many genes duplicated in polyploidy change to a new function. (see www.eeob.iastate.edu/faculty/WendelJ/pdfs/Adams_and_Wende_COPB_2005.pdf) and others simply are evolved out of existence. The evidence now suggests that the retained genes play a major role in evolution.

This process has been identified in a number of species including baker's yeast (Saccharomyces cerevisiae), mustard weed/thale cress (Arabidopsis thaliana), rice (Oryza sativa) and near the origin of the teleost fishes.

Moreover, evolution of plants by natural selection rather than artificial breeding from a diploid to a polyploidal state has been observed. Two Tragopogon species of recent origin have been shown to have arisen on several occasions (Soltis and Soltis, 1999). Three Old World parental diploid species (T. dubius, T. porrifolis, and T. pratensis) had been introduced to North America early on in the 1900s, and hybrid polyploidal plants derived from these diploid progenitors were discovered in Washington and in Idaho by 1949 (Ownbey, 1950). There are several other examples as well (see http://www.geocities.com/we_evolve/Plants/polyploidy.html, for example).

Thus, by any definition polyploidy demonstrates an increase in information in evolution.

Information theory is a branch of applied mathematics which measures the quantity of information. It provides a quantitative description of information and was developed mostly within the ICT sector.

If you make a digital telephone call, Information Theory is used to codify your voice in digital format so that, in effect, your voice is carried over the telephone as a descriptive, real time, piece of computer software. At the other end it instructs the receiving device to translate it into a usable sound signal. The principle is much the same with a digital television signal.

What information Theory is basically silent about is the qualitative features of the signal. If you talk gibberish in a telephone call, it cannot distinguish this from an erudite discussion on cosmology, for example. It can only quantitatively measure and rationalise the amount of information. If your PC is downloading info from the Internet, Information Theory will provide the measurement in terms of, say, KBit/s (rate of transmission) or total information transmitted (say 2 Mbytes). It doesn’t say that it can distinguish the function of the information. You could be watching a pornographic clip or downloading the works of Shakespeare of a completed random jumble of letters and characters or repeatedly download the same thing. All are information, according to Information theory. 2 Mbytes of information is twice 1 Mbyte even though that may involve transmitting a file of 1 Mbyte of information and then transmitting the exact same file again.

Put another way, in the more advanced concepts of Information Theory, the quantitative measure of information can be shown to increase in relation to its uselessness or non-functionality.

If you watch the news on TV you will often see what is called a talking head. That is to say, a newscaster in a studio taking head on to the camera. Careful look and see what is actually moving when this happens. It’s mostly just the newscasters lips, the odd movement of the head, hands, maybe a shuffle of paper, etc. The rest of the background isn’t moving. It’s stationary.

Contrast this to a horse race on TV where the camera pans to show the horses running. There is movement in the horses and the jockeys but the one thing that isn’t still, relatively to the camera, is the background.

Basically in digital television, raw studio programming is produced at a rate of 200 MBit/s. But information theory has been applied to massively reduce this. What is transmitted to you is only the changes in information identified by the camera, not the picture. So, in the case of the newscaster, the transmission is an initial "picture which shows him/her and the full studio background, after which only changes are transmitted. You only need to transmit the background "image" of the studio once.

With horse racing, though, the apparent movement in the background is much greater so changes are repeatedly being transmitted. This, incidentally, is why professional broadcasters use horse racing to test their equipment.

Typically, a horse race requires about 4-6 times the information to transmit as does a talking head.

So, if you took one of these signals and jumbled them up randomly to the point that they were nonsensical, would you be transmitting more or less information? Answer – much more because the transmission techniques are based on measuring change and all elements of the image would be changing rapidly.

In other words, the amount of information in randomness is greater than it is in orderliness.

Still, don't bother going to Bristol to learn all about this. Burgess is going round the country saying that department after department are talking out of their backsides. Pity he doesn't know where his own backside is.

Still, there is a good chance you won't get in because Burgess and his pals bullied you into believing that what you are being taught at "A" level in geology, geography, physics, and biology are wrong. If you don't make the grade, you now know why. The man is unqualified to talk about these subjects and the University is deceiving you.

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Home Underhand Strategies Latest News Updates UK Schools UK Specific Creationism Primer The BCSE More General Articles BS Group Furl Join the Fight Contact Advanced Search Admin	Tin Pot Universities-Bristol Meet Britain's Tin Pot Universities: Number 1, Bristol. By Roger Stanyard Stuart Burgess, Professor of Mechanical Breakdowns Stuart Burgess BSc, PhD, CEng, MIMechE is a Professor of Design and Nature in the Department of Mechanical Engineering (he is head of the department) at the University of Bristol in the UK. Bristol is one of Britain’s better universities (it’s in the Russell League of the top 17, but is not Golden Triangle, top 6, establishment). Not in my view, though. I’m a consumer and this place stinks in its advertising and promotion. I wouldn’t pay to do a course here if it were the last higher education establishment in the world as a result. Burgess is apparently a Baptist and, according to the nutters Answers in Genesis, is a member of Buckingham Chapel in Bristol. This is described as an Evangelical Baptist church. He also holds a diploma in Theology from the London Reformed Baptist Seminary (part of the Metropolitan Tabernacle). However, I have no idea what status this holds. At one stage in his career Burgess world on the solar array panel deployment mechanism of the European Space Agency’s earth observation satellite Envisat. His first degree and PhD are both from Brunel University. Impressed I am not. A summary bio of Burgess can be found at www.men.bris.ac.uk/contact/acstaff/scb.html (on the University’s web site). It lists a number of academic papers he has authored or co-authored but entirely fails to mention his religious publications. To me, that is frightening. As a religious fundamentalist, Burgess is an outspoken critic of mainstream science but the site is utterly silent on the matter. Perhaps this is because his pseudo-science has been pulled to pieces. See here, www.freerepublic.com/forum/a3835f6e91ba4.htm, for evidence that Burgess’s academic references are being censored. In 1999 Burgess had a paper published in AiG’s "technical journal", Creation ex Nihilo (volume 12, issue 2). The paper was called "Critical Characteristics and the Irreducible Knee Joint". (You can read it at www.trueorigin.org/knee.asp). And it states that he was on the academic payroll at Bristol and he drew upon the expertise of a fellow academic there, Dr John Davis, to produce it. Davis was then in the Department of Civil Engineering. There is no reference to the paper anywhere on the University’s web site. The web site is being used to advertise the University. One wonders why, in a major British university Burgess couldn’t find a biologist to help him. It takes little guessing, though, why the paper is not listed on the University’s web site. Pity Burgess didn’t get help from someone that knew what they are talking about. I’ve read the paper and it is raving bonkers. It is wrong from the very first sentence. He doesn’t even appear to know the very basics of the Theory of Evolution. There are howlers all over the paper. I almost cringed reading it. The first sentence states that "according to the theory of evolution, natural mechanisms such as limb joints have evolved one characteristic at a time by random and rare genetic mistakes, called mutations." The Theory of Evolution says nothing of the sort. It’s not the Theory of Evolution by Mutation. It’s the Theory of Evolution by Natural Selection. It’s the latter which gives rise to evolution. It doesn’t say that mutations are genetic mistakes. It doesn’t say they are rare. It doesn’t say natural mechanisms evolve characteristics one at a time. That’s just the howlers in the first sentence! He doesn’t even understand what genetic drift is. Yet to this day Burgess is publicly pushing he belief that the knee joint demonstrates irreducible complexity. The whole argument immediately falls to pieces because Burgess does not understand that multiple traits can develop in parallel. To me, the university is failing in its duty to point out that Burgess publishes in crackpot journals; Burgess’s religious-pseudo-science is so bad that no academic journal which uses peer review would touch it was the end of the proverbial barge-pole. Indeed, it is so bad, the University appears to censor it from its web site. The AiG publication doesn’t involve peer review because you have to be a creationist to both write for it and review its papers. As far as I am aware no technical or academic journal in the world makes the preposterous demand that you have to agree with the owners’ religion opinions before submission or if you peer review for it. It’s a journal for severe crackpots. Moreover, given Burgess’s crapola on the Theory of Evolution, his paper wasn’t even checked by his fundamentalist pals. AiG’s status in the scientific world can be judged by the fact that its head is a former school teacher with no more than a first degree. Burgess claims that Modern Cosmology and the Theory of Evolution are no more than "ploys by Satan to divert man from belief in God and a literal interpretation of Genesis". Burgess is author of Hallmarks by Design, published by Day One Publications (2000). He rehashes his crapola about knee joints in this as well; see the extract at www.e-n.org.uk/1154-Hallmarks-of-Design.htm. But wait, Day One Publications is not a publisher of scientific books; it publishes religious books. You should now smell a rat. This is not a science text book. Day One is the publishing arm of the Lord’s Day Observance Society and publishes work by "leading evangelicals", not leading mechanical engineers. But, of course, Burgess is deeply involved in the creationist movement and its attempts to undermine science. Lets have a look at what he thinks about physics, for example: According to the Brights movement in the UK, Burgess claims that "There is a case for arguing that Satan has deliberately made modern theoretical physics complicated in order to blind people to the truth of the origins of the universe." Well, don’t bother applying to Bristol University to do physics when it has appointed a professor that tells you the subject matter is evil. Now, one of the most famous graduates of Bristol University, where Burgess works, was the Nobel Prize winning theoretical physicist, Paul Dirac. Dirac studied electrical engineering and mathematics at Bristol. The Brights went on the point out to the University of Bristol that Burgess was suggesting that Dirac was in league with the devil. The Brights also pointed out that Burgess had claimed that he could prove that both Darwin and Einstein were wrong. Burgess believes that the Theory of Evolution is an "Absurd and shallow deception" Well, I am still waiting for this mechanical engineer to prove that Einstein was wrong and the theory of evolution is crap. Here is the evidence from Burgess listed on the University’s web site: (Long, isn’t it?) Here are the list of papers in peer reviewed academic journals in physics and biology where the professor has demonstrated the evidence: (Long, isn’t it?) Here is the list of nominations for Burgess for the Nobel Prize for showing that the two key fundamentals of science are wrong: (long, isn’t it?) Here is a list of Burgess’s qualifications in biology: (long, isn’t it?) You can immediately spot Burgess’s kookery here. It’s the word "deception". Its protagonists deceive, according to Burgess. Burgess doesn’t believe it so he smears by innuendo those that do. It’s the old fundamentalist tricks at work again. Still, Burgess claims against science don’t stop there. He believes that the theory of evolution is the latest ploy that Satan is using to encourage man to rebel against God (from Origin of Man). That suggests that Bristol University in its entirety is in league with the devil, including the payroll department which provides his monthly salary payment and the students paying for courses there. Burgess appears to be associated with the Creation Science Movement based in Portsmouth, as well as AiG. For example, in 2002 he, alongside David Rosevear, led a creation conference in Bristol attended by approximately 70 people. At that conference Burgess revealed his position and lied to the audience: "Dr Burgess reminded us that opposition to biblical truth is as strong today as ever, as the proponents of evolution both deny creation and try to prevent it being taught in schools." They don’t; the issue is about teaching creationism in science lessons in state schools. Moreover, old earth creationists often accept the theory of evolution. (See www.evangelical-times.org/ETNews/July02/jul02n16.htm for Burgess’s statement.) Burgess is also author of "the Origin of Man" also published by Day One Publications. Interestingly, the forward to this book was written by Professor Andrew Sims, Emeritus (meaning retired) professor of psychiatry at the University of Leeds and past President of the Royal College of Psychiatrists. Sounds impressive doesn’t it? But Sims is a fellow hard line creationist. This looks to be vanity publishing by another name. It’s standard fundamentalist practice. Use your own publishers and pals and keep well away from mainstream publishers. One wonders precisely why Burgess and his pals got a psychiatrist to forward the book rather than a biologist. Presumably because virtually no biologist would touch such a book with the end of a barge-pole. Not least because Burgess is a mechanical engineer. Here’s an example from the book of how Burgess smears with innuendo. Talking about information theory and evolution, Burgess states quite categorically that "Atheists have often been asked to give examples of where there has been an increase in information by naturalistic means. However, they have not been able to give any credible examples. (See footnotes for the debunking of this.) Note that his innuendo is that people who do not agree with his religious opinions are atheists. This comment is not just a matter of complete lack of intellectual honesty, its lying and in breach of the ninth commandment. But it is bog standard fundamentalist practice. It remains, though, a deeply insulting and arrogant comment to scientists (which neither Burgess nor Sims are), many Christians, other believers in religion, agnostics, atheists and the indifferent who do not accept Burgess’s religious extremism. Burgess’s underlying proposition, though, is that anything which disagrees with his opinions on religion must be wrong. He’s entitled to his views but, like most fundamentalists, he wants to push them onto others. Burgess was one of the signatories in the 2002 letter to Estelle Morris. Moreover, Burgess seems to have mixed up his professional position with his religious dogma. For example the book Origin of Man made great play on the fact that Burgess had been appointed to a professorship. Yet the book is a compendium of half understood hocus pocus on subjects that Burgess is out of his depth on. By all accounts it is not an intelligent book (see www.the-brights.net/forums/forum/index.php?showtopic=2654&st=0 for a discussion that pulls it to pieces). I’m not a scientist but instantly recognise that Burgess basically does not know what he is talking about when it comes to the Theory of Evolution and I have grave doubts as to whether he understand information theory at all. As a scientist Burgess is a rank amateur crackpot. One wonders how far the academic staff at Bristol wince when they hear Burgess’s name. I certainly would have doubts about taking courses at Bristol University given that it has, as a head of department and professor, a world-class windbag. This man is mind-numbing in his banality. One wonders what other religious extremists Bristol has amongst its academic staff. I’m all for academic freedom from such people and the institutions that employ and promote them - the more so because he evangelises his opinions big time. Burgess was one of the speakers at AiG’s 2006 "Creation Without Compromise" conference at Swanwick in Derbyshire. It ever there was complete proof that Burgess is a crackpot, this is it. Burgess is up to he neck in trying to push his religious opinions into science education. For example, he has been touring schools in Northern Ireland (see http://www.bbc.co.uk/northernireland/religion/sundaysequence/archive-churchstories.shtml – it’s a BBC audio where Burgess spouts off his fundamentalist views) claiming that the world is only 6,000 years old. Pity the poor children applying to enter Bristol University who have committed scientific suicide by listening to Burgess. That’s before they get there! Does Bristol’s School of Biological Sciences, Department of Archaeology and Anthropology and Earth Sciences Department now provide remedial education to science students from Northern Ireland that have been lectured to the head of their Department of Mechanical Engineering? Does the University reject potential physics students because it’s professors (i.e. Burgess) tell them that the subject is nonsense? Or is Bristol University rejecting applications from Northern Ireland because the students have got poor A level grades as a result of listening to their Head of Mechanical Engineering? Does the University accept that its Head of Engineering is telling school children that what they are being taught in biology, physics, geology and geography lessons is wrong? If so, has this reflected in any changes to the University’s admissions policies and procedures. Given that Dr Burgess has been active in Northern Ireland, what specification action has the University taken in respect to examination grades in biology, physics, geology and geography from affected students from the province. Has the University discussed this with Martin McGuiness? Is the university concerned that its Head of Mechanical Engineering has been trying to influence both the national curriculum in schools and directly teach within schools his religious opinions which may result in failure of pupils to gain entrance to other departments of the University? Burgess claims that his reason for proselytising to children is that, on the day of judgement, people will not make the excuse that have been taught the Theory of Evolution. Basically Burgess is telling children that they have to make a choice, based on fear, between religion and science. Accept the Theory of Evolution and you will go to hell. Burgess is determined to get his religious opinions into schools. Is the University prepared to accept the consequences or rejecting 18 year old students on the basis that a professor, less qualified than they are, dismisses subject after subject as being wrong? Can the university demonstrate that the professor is better qualified than they are in such subjects as physics, biology, geology, astronomy, geography and archaeology? Does the university consider that the professors paper in AiG journals reflect a professional understanding by the professor of biology? Do the academics in other departments respect his opinions on physics and biology? Nice man, great educator, brilliant scientist. If this is the standard of intellectual ability at Bristol University, don’t waste you effort trying to get in. and watch who you employ from there. Bristol has given security of tenure to a member of its academic staff who’s basic tenet is that if science contradicts his religious opinions, then science is wrong. This places Bristol on a par with the Bob Jones University and Patrick Henry College in the United States. Right now it looks to be developing into nothing better than a tin-pot bible college. I conclude that Burgess is a key mover and shaker in a movement out to wreck education in the UK from top to bottom. His opinions on religion are wholly incompatible with the concept of liberal education, science, rationality, modernity. Combined these are the underlying ethos of the very concept of a university. The sad side is that, in his mainstream academic work, Burgess (and, to some extent, his co-fundamentalist Andy McIntosh) are looking at "design" in nature to apply it to engineering design. The irony is that natural design is a misnomer. The creationists deny it because Goddidit and the rest of us who care to consider it believe that form and function was caused by natural selection (with an element of trial and error, perhaps). Burgess is author of another Answers in Genesis paper, "The beauty of the peacock tail and the problems with the theory of sexual selection." This was published in AiG’s TJ Magazine, Volume 15, issue 2, August 2001. He was on the University’s payroll at the time. Burgess claims that "according to the theory of sexual selection, the peacock tail has gradually evolved because the peahen selects beautiful males for mating. However, there is no satisfactory explanation of how the sexual selection cycle can start or why the peahen should prefer beautiful features. In addition, there is irreducible complexity in both the physical structure of the feather and in the beautiful patterns." He then goes on to say that "Even though this theory (sexual selection) has always been controversial, most evolutionists now believe that it can explain how beautiful features could evolve from nothing." Except that without exception they don’t. I am not aware of any scientist anywhere ever saying that the theory of evolution explains something evolves from nothing. The statement is plain damn wrong. Features evolve from other features, not from nothing. Or is the mad professor trying to debunk another subject, Abiogenesis, by the back door? A friend of mine, Timothy Chase, active in the Debunkcreation group, has added the following analysis of Burgess’s crapola on mutations. The points are in ascending order of significance, point five basically pulling Burgess to pieces: If you are talking about a "point mutation" in a gene, it may be silent -- or it may severely disrupt the protein or proteins which the gene codes for (e.g., by resulting in a stop codon) -- or it may be somewhere in between. And there we are just talking about point mutations -- in this case, a substitution. An insertion or deletion may be far more drastic inasmuch as it results in a shift in the reading frame. But that is with point mutations in coding sequences. 2. Alternatively, a far more drastic mutation is a chromosomal rearrangement. It turns out that the hotspots for chromosomal rearrangements which result in cancer today are the very same hotspots which resulted in chromosomal rearrangements during mammalian evolution from the earliest mammals to mice and men -- and while there are only about 400 of them. Among the one-tenth of one percent of newborns which have these rearrangements, fifty percent are clinically significant, which means that the other fifty percent aren't. 3. Regardless of how much more likely deleterious mutations are than beneficial mutations, if beneficial mutations occur, in time, they will win out as they will give those who have them and the descendants who express them an advantage over the rest of the population, and this advantage will tend to translate into having more descendants who have even more descendants. (However, there is the distinct possibility that a given "beneficial" mutation will be lost multiple times before it becomes fixed in a population, that is carried by all extant members.) 4. Mutations in regulatory sequences (particularly promoter regions) are less likely to be deleterious than mutations in coding sequences -- since they won't actually break the protein that is expressed, but will modify the "when," the "where" and the "how much" of its expression. But at the same time, mutations in the promoter regions may have fairly significant effects. For example, the lengthening of the bones in the bat limb has been traced back to a single gene --Bone Morphogenic Protein 2 -- and changes to the promoter region have been implicated. With a similar mutation preventing the expression of a protein which induces cell death the webbing between the bones, you have the batwing itself, and probably an animal capable of gliding from tree to tree. 5. In a couple of ways, it just doesn't make sense to speak of deleterious and beneficial mutations as if they were two totally separate things. Many mutations are neither silent, nor strongly beneficial nor strongly detrimental. Many are what are called "near-neutral." (See Ohta, a student of Kimura -- who originated the neutral theory of molecular evolution in 1968.) They may be slightly detrimental, but if the population and consequent gene pools are small enough, they will be largely invisible to natural selection. Moreover, what may be slightly detrimental in one context (gene duplication, for example) may be beneficial in another. And if the population in which a slightly detrimental mutation (such as a gene duplication, segmental duplication, chromosomal rearrangement, or polyploidy) occurs is small enough, as the population expands, additional mutations and gradually increasing selection may shape the original, slightly detrimental mutation into something quite positive -- this is the essential idea behind Ohno's theory regarding the origins of genomic complexity. Tim also subsequently added that the evolution of the limbs ( or circulatory system -- as in the starfish, or blood-clotting mechanism, etc.) was a gradual process, but it only needed to be a gradual process. Morpheological development during the growth of the organism is coordinated, but this coordination during morpheological development also means that it is only a few key variables which have to change for there to be coordinated evolution. This is why both Lenny and I emphasized regulatory genes. Michael Suttkuss, also in the same Yahoo group, points out that every human on the planet has several mutations (changes from either parent), so they aren't at all rare. (Roger Stanyard – I believe it is about 100 mutations per person.) Lenny Flank, group owner, adds on the issue of evolving one at a time that "This is a very common error made by creationuts --- they seem to think that every anatomical characteristic is controlled by one gene, and that for a structure like a knee to evolve, each and every one of these characteristics must appear, one at a time, with its own gene. 'T'ain't so. Apparently the creationuts are utterly pig-ignorant about such things as HOX genes, regulatory genes, and pleiotropic genes. Troy Britain of Talk Origins is dismissive of Burgess’s claims about the human knee joint (see www.talkorigins.org/origins/feedback/mar02.html): "From my reading of the article it seems to be highly flawed especially in its almost total lack of discussion on the comparative anatomies of living non-human apes, extinct hominids and H. sapiens. This lack of attention to comparative anatomy (and physiology) is typical of anti-evolutionists, leading them to continually talk about the anatomy/physiology of various organisms as if they exist in a vacuum (examples: THE woodpecker or THE bombardier beetle). They focus on some extreme example of organ or system in a particular species as if it is totally unique to that species. The fact is that when one looks at other closely related species one usually finds that there are variations on the extreme example that the anti-evolutionists have focused upon. For instance the bombardier beetle that anti-evolutionists often cite is just one species of a whole group of beetles (family Carabidae) many of which have some variation on a chemical defense mechanism, using the same basic chemicals (which exist in many beetles in varying amounts), but used in differing ways. The specific example that anti-evolutionists cite sprays an explosive mixture out of its abdomen in a fairly well aimed stream at its attackers, however there are other Carabid beetles that spray with less accurate aim, and others that merely excrete bad tasting chemicals out of their abdomens when attacked. There is a whole spectrum from fairly simple to fairly complex defense mechanisms. Anti-evolutionists only talk about the more complex variant. This discussion of the human knee is another example of this sort of argument in a vacuum. While I am not an expert in the comparative anatomies of the living non-human apes and humans, as far as I am aware there is no material difference between them. That is, every bone, muscle, ligament, tendon, and cartilage in the human knee has its corresponding representative in the knee of chimpanzees and the other great apes. Yes they are shaped somewhat differently. Yes they are proportioned differently. But as far as I know all the same parts are there. As for fossil hominids, the knees of more advanced types like H. erectus (which are either "fully human" or "just apes" depending on what anti-evolutionist you talk to) seem to be virtually identical to those of H. sapiens. As for the knees of the more primitive species of Homo (H. habilis) and the australopithecines these become increasingly like those of living non-human apes the farther back in time one goes. Exactly the sort of thing one would predict if humans evolved from an "ape-like" ancestor. The knee of Australopithecus afaresis (which most anti-evolutionists say is "just an ape") retains a number of "ape-like" features but also has characteristics like those of later hominids including H. sapiens. In other words it is an intermediate form in this regard. See The ICR and Lucy: Bearing False Witness Against Thy Neighbor for some comparative photos, or refer to any good text on human evolution for comparative illustrations. (See also Jim Lippards article at http://web.archive.org/web/20020606103226/www.talkorigins.org/faqs/knee-joint.html on fundamentalists’ fraudulent claims about knee joints.) Burgess does mention living apes briefly but only to dismiss them as being poor bipedal walkers. However this is a problem for his argument for irreducible complexity (IC), at least as I understand Michael Behe's (the person responsible for the recent popularity of this term) definition of the term, in that while the knees of living non-human apes are slightly different in form, and are not as efficient for use in bipedal walking as those of humans, they do work, and they can walk bipedally. If the ancestor of hominids (bipedal apes including H. sapiens), whose knee was essentially identical to the living non-human apes, could walk bipedally at all, then it would be possible for there to be a selective advantage for any slight modifications in their descendants which lead towards an increase in efficiency of bipedalism. The human knee seems to me to be a poor example of an IC structure. Some of Burgess' other arguments just seem nonsensical to me. For example he states: "The knee joint presents a major challenge to the evolutionist because it is unique, and because there are no intermediate forms of joint between a condylar joint and the other two limb joints found in animals and humans - the ball and socket joint and the pivot joint." I fail to understand Mr. Burgess' challenge here. Knee joints did not evolve from elbow, shoulder, or hip joints. Rather knee joints have been knee joints since their origin in the first tetrapods. The same applies to the other types of joints. So why would we expect to find "intermediate forms" between them? It is a curious thing that Behe's principle of IC as an argument for design turns traditional arguments from design on their heads. No longer are those features of organisms that seem perfectly "sculpted" to suit their needs necessarily evidence for design. No longer are the features of organisms which are well designed from an engineering point of view necessarily evidence for design. Now, under Behe's IC principle of design, it doesn't matter how clunky, ungainly, and poorly designed from an engineering point of view something is, it only matters that it is supposedly irreducibly complex. Apparently the "Designer" under this new design "theory" is a (supernatural) cosmic Rube Goldberg." (Rube Goldberg was an American cartoonist who, according to Wikipedia, "earned lasting fame for his "Rube Goldberg machines" (exceedingly complex devices that perform simple tasks in very indirect and convoluted ways.") My own comments on Burgess’s paper is as follows: Burgess states that "since a human characteristic is typically specified by one gene with about 1,000 chemical units of information, it requires many thousands of units of information in the genetic code to specify the essential design information of the four-bar hinge." Unfortunately human characteristics are not specified by one gene. In general they are frequently and normally specified by multiple genes. Moreover, a single gene can be responsible for several traits; this is called pleiotropy. He claims that "random gene mutations generally cause malfunctions and suffering in living organisms." They don’t; for the most part they do not cause either malfunctions or sufferings. Most are neutral or mildly deleterious in this respect. Burgess also omits a key factor that natural selection acts on mutations that are deleterious. This is known as purifying or stabilising selection and is considered to be very common. Wikipedia states that this "lowers the frequency of alleles which have a deleterious effect on the phenotype (that is, lower fitness), until they are eliminated from the population. Purifying selection results in functional genetic features (e.g. protein-coding sequences or regulatory sequences) being conserved over time because of selective pressure against deleterious variants." He states that "the knee joint presents a major challenge to the evolutionist because it is unique, and because there are no intermediate forms of joint between a condylar joint and the other two limb joints found in animals and humans - the ball and socket joint and the pivot joint." Unfortunately our arms have not evolved from our legs or vice versa. There is no reason why there should be an intermediate form between the two. He further adds that "it is interesting to note that some biology books describe the knee joint as a ‘highly modified hinge joint’ implying that the knee must have evolved from the simple pivot joint that exists in the elbow. As far as I am aware no biologist has ever claimed rear legs have evolved from front legs (and therefore knees from elbows). "The fact that evolution can in theory evolve characteristics that are non-critical is used by the evolutionist to give the impression that evolution can work. School textbooks often give examples of how a new colour of a creature such as a moth could evolve by mutation, and then say that with many mutations the moth could have evolved from a primitive creature. However, even though the colour of a moth may be important to its survival, the characteristic of colour is nevertheless a trivial one in terms of how it affects the functioning of organs and parts within the moth. Therefore, the example of the evolution of colour by mutation is not an example of evolution at all because no matter how many non-critical characteristics are evolved, they can never change one kind of functioning system into another kind of functioning system." Camouflage against predators is not a trivial function; it is a vital function, just as the ability to fly or run away from predators is. It’s vital because if it doesn’t work the creature has its internal organisms ruined – they get eaten by the predator. It’s a seriously critical function. Moreover as one gene mutation can affect several characteristics, there is, technically, no reason why a change in surface colour or pattern can’t affect internal organs – and vice versa. What Burgess is claiming is that simple functions are trivial and complex functions are critical. Which begs the question as to what is meant by trivial and critical and which are more critical than others. Are the teeth a cat more critical or trivial than its rear knee joint and, if so, what criterion or criteria are used to determine this? Burgess fails to explain this glaring gap in his argument? Burgess has concluded that evolution that can be identified isn’t evolution at all because it is too simple. Evolution can only exists for complex functions which are likely to be irreducibly complex. But he is also saying that evolution cannot account for complex functions! I’m afraid that Evolutionary Theory does not distinguish between complex and simple functions the way Burgess claims. It covers both the alleged simple and the alleged complex. He adds that "there is no doubt that critical characteristics are obscured because evolutionists can only attempt to give trivial examples of evolution such as changes in colour." And the recently published evidence on the evolution of a bat’s wing is not amongst these? Or the school books I learned from years back which used the example of an elephants trunk? Or that of a horse’s hoof? And by what criteria are these trivial? He’s another convoluted argument from Burgess: "The theory of evolution is analogous to proposing that one can take the engineering drawings of a simple pivot joint used in a motorbike steering wheel and evolve them into the drawings of the steering system of a four-wheeled vehicle. The information on the drawings is equivalent to the genetic code, and random photocopying errors in the information are analogous to mutations. The evolutionist believes that the random photocopying errors will sometimes produce a slightly better system, and that via selection, eventually the steering system of the motorbike will turn into a four-bar hinge and form the steering system of a four-wheeled vehicle!" Nope, the theory of evolution says nothing of the sort. Mutation and natural selective in itself is not predictive of any future feature. The key factor in eventual form is neither, it’s the environment. The theory predicts that organisms will evolve to adapt to changing conditions in the environment. Natural selection, which is basically the product of an insufficient food supply, rigorously selects appropriate mutations and rejects those that are not. There is no such mechanism for either inducing random variations in repeated photocopying of an engineering drawing and then rigorously filtering out the vast majority of them. Moreover, the engineering drawing analogy is arse about tit. The Theory of natural selection is unpredictive in that it can’t be used to predict the overall, in total, features of future animals. There is a high degree of randomness in development and, moreover, there is an external variable which is not predicted by the theory. It’s called the environment. Put another way, just as repeated photocopying of the aforementioned engineering drawing won’t produce a drawing of the mechanism for 4W drive car, the theory of evolution won’t define all the features of a future organism. Moreover, the evidence seems to increasingly suggest that the genetic information including regulatory genes is itself facilitative of implementing changes through certain mutations. In other words, some mutations within parts of the genetic code are likely to have much bigger impacts that others. That implies it has a selective capability which contradicts the simplistic concept that evolution is just a product of random mutations and natural selection. To make matters more complex mutations are reversible. Moreover, the analogy between engineering drawings (and also operating instructions for a complex system like an aircraft) and the human genome is fallacious. Burgess just does not understand basic genetics. The genome is part of the human body, not an external description or set of instructions. It’s basically a set of self-replicating chemicals which generate growth and form by chemical reactions. It’s akin to using yeast to produce bread or beer; its generative not descriptive. It’s not the recipe, nor the description, nor the instructions – it’s part of the ingredients. Put another way, A DNA string is a structure, it is extremely complex and is not completely robust under all circumstances, including dividing and replication; that lack of absolute robustness throughout the string is what allows mutations to happen. Environmental factors alone thus ensure that it cannot be completely robust and there are clearly other factors which account for this. Burgess also claims that the human knee is unique and compares humans to apes. However, entirely absent from this statement is the obvious fact that modern man is not the only ape that has walked upright; there are loads of examples of apes that have knees very similar to what he calls mankind. So, er, what about Neanderthal Man or Homo heidelbergensis or Homo erectus or Australopithecus afarensis. Burgess can’t keep his religious opinions out of his pseudo-science. He claims that "the human knee joint not only gives evidence of design but it also gives evidence of the infinite power and wisdom of God." One in four runners (including myself in the past) can testify from first hand experience that the human knee does not testify to God’s infinite power and wisdom. Its flaws are a serious problem for us. Moreover, there is something utterly bogus about Burgess when he claims that "whether gene mutations are random (as atheists believe) or planned (as many theistic evolutionists believe)…." I don’t know what the reader thinks, but this smacks innuendo and arrogance. The innuendo is that those who do not accept Burgess’s opinions on religion are morally suspect and he is our self-appointed moral superior. I find that to be deeply insulting and distressing and conclude that the man is a complete jerk. This thinking comes up time and time again with fundies. There are a vast number of believers in the theory of evolution who are Christian, Jewish, Taoist, Buddhist, Hindu, Muslim and so on. (Many mainstream Christians find the views of fundamentalists abhorrent.) Most of us accept that religious belief and belief in the theory of evolution are completely separate issues. One is not dependent on the other. However, the fundie opinion appears to be that unless you circularly define a "God believer" as someone who doesn't believe in evolution, you must accept that religious belief and evolution are independent Information theory: Burgess says that Atheists (a Burgess piece of Bollox) have often been asked to give examples of where there has been an increase in information by naturalistic means. However, they have not been able to give any credible examples. Answer: here are some examples: Polyploidy in fish (Carp v Goldfish), your bread roll at lunch time (domestic wheat is polyploidal), chips (potatoes are polyploidal), cabbage (polyploidal as well) and strawberries. They are all examples that have been bred from diploid equivalents. Polyploidal is common in plants and there are several well know examples in vertebrates including a species of mammal. Polyploidy is where the number of each chromosome in a species is more than two. In humans we each have two sets of 23 chromosomes – we’re dipolidal – Goldfish, which have four sets are polyploidal. The carp from which it has been bred, has two sets. Thus a goldfish has twice the number of alleles (four at each genetic loci rather than two) of a carp and thus twice as much information in its genetic code. Polyploidy is recognised in both natural selection (Salamanders and Salmon, for example) and artificial selection and is increasingly recognised as a significant element in evolution. General, domesticated plants such as wheat which have been cross-bred to a polyploidal state are more robust than their diploid ancestors. Current thinking amongst biologists is that most animals and plants are descended at some stage from polyploidal ancestors. Polyploidy is a big problem for creationists who, I assume, dismiss it on the grounds that it doesn’t add any extra information (in a non-Information theory sense). However, polyploidal organisms, it appears, tend to evolve over time into diploid organisms because the duplicated chromosomes become differentiated over time. Duplicates genes that arise from the shift from diploid to polyploidal species can mutate and evolve in their own right and, indeed, interact with other duplicated genes. There is increasing evidence that many genes duplicated in polyploidy change to a new function. (see www.eeob.iastate.edu/faculty/WendelJ/pdfs/Adams_and_Wende_COPB_2005.pdf) and others simply are evolved out of existence. The evidence now suggests that the retained genes play a major role in evolution. This process has been identified in a number of species including baker's yeast (Saccharomyces cerevisiae), mustard weed/thale cress (Arabidopsis thaliana), rice (Oryza sativa) and near the origin of the teleost fishes. Moreover, evolution of plants by natural selection rather than artificial breeding from a diploid to a polyploidal state has been observed. Two Tragopogon species of recent origin have been shown to have arisen on several occasions (Soltis and Soltis, 1999). Three Old World parental diploid species (T. dubius, T. porrifolis, and T. pratensis) had been introduced to North America early on in the 1900s, and hybrid polyploidal plants derived from these diploid progenitors were discovered in Washington and in Idaho by 1949 (Ownbey, 1950). There are several other examples as well (see http://www.geocities.com/we_evolve/Plants/polyploidy.html, for example). Thus, by any definition polyploidy demonstrates an increase in information in evolution. Information theory is a branch of applied mathematics which measures the quantity of information. It provides a quantitative description of information and was developed mostly within the ICT sector. If you make a digital telephone call, Information Theory is used to codify your voice in digital format so that, in effect, your voice is carried over the telephone as a descriptive, real time, piece of computer software. At the other end it instructs the receiving device to translate it into a usable sound signal. The principle is much the same with a digital television signal. What information Theory is basically silent about is the qualitative features of the signal. If you talk gibberish in a telephone call, it cannot distinguish this from an erudite discussion on cosmology, for example. It can only quantitatively measure and rationalise the amount of information. If your PC is downloading info from the Internet, Information Theory will provide the measurement in terms of, say, KBit/s (rate of transmission) or total information transmitted (say 2 Mbytes). It doesn’t say that it can distinguish the function of the information. You could be watching a pornographic clip or downloading the works of Shakespeare of a completed random jumble of letters and characters or repeatedly download the same thing. All are information, according to Information theory. 2 Mbytes of information is twice 1 Mbyte even though that may involve transmitting a file of 1 Mbyte of information and then transmitting the exact same file again. Put another way, in the more advanced concepts of Information Theory, the quantitative measure of information can be shown to increase in relation to its uselessness or non-functionality. If you watch the news on TV you will often see what is called a talking head. That is to say, a newscaster in a studio taking head on to the camera. Careful look and see what is actually moving when this happens. It’s mostly just the newscasters lips, the odd movement of the head, hands, maybe a shuffle of paper, etc. The rest of the background isn’t moving. It’s stationary. Contrast this to a horse race on TV where the camera pans to show the horses running. There is movement in the horses and the jockeys but the one thing that isn’t still, relatively to the camera, is the background. Basically in digital television, raw studio programming is produced at a rate of 200 MBit/s. But information theory has been applied to massively reduce this. What is transmitted to you is only the changes in information identified by the camera, not the picture. So, in the case of the newscaster, the transmission is an initial "picture which shows him/her and the full studio background, after which only changes are transmitted. You only need to transmit the background "image" of the studio once. With horse racing, though, the apparent movement in the background is much greater so changes are repeatedly being transmitted. This, incidentally, is why professional broadcasters use horse racing to test their equipment. Typically, a horse race requires about 4-6 times the information to transmit as does a talking head. So, if you took one of these signals and jumbled them up randomly to the point that they were nonsensical, would you be transmitting more or less information? Answer – much more because the transmission techniques are based on measuring change and all elements of the image would be changing rapidly. In other words, the amount of information in randomness is greater than it is in orderliness. Still, don't bother going to Bristol to learn all about this. Burgess is going round the country saying that department after department are talking out of their backsides. Pity he doesn't know where his own backside is. Still, there is a good chance you won't get in because Burgess and his pals bullied you into believing that what you are being taught at "A" level in geology, geography, physics, and biology are wrong. If you don't make the grade, you now know why. The man is unqualified to talk about these subjects and the University is deceiving you. Edit Source Backlinks List Group
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