Thanks, Dad

My dad sent me an essay by an historian named Paul Johnson that was published in Forbes magazine, entitled “Thoughts on the existence of God.” Fine, I thought, fun to read. My dad usually sends me interesting tidbits. I noticed that my dad had written a note on the page… “’God’ is interjected in those explanations that are incomplete.” I was intrigued and went on to read the essay, which basically summed up why the author believed that there had to be a God.

Suffice it to say that the first paragraph made me rabid, and the rest of it whipped me into a frenzy. Why dump on science to prove that you believe in God? It is not necessary!!!

So, Mr. Johnson says that Darwinian evolution is “becoming increasingly vulnerable as the progress of science reveals its weaknesses.” Is that supposed to be a bad thing? I thought science was about change, and revising your theories as new evidence appears. I loved his next statement. “One day, perhaps soon, it will collapse in ruin.” Don’t be so melodramatic, Mr. Johnson. How about scientists agreeing that Darwinian evolution, or natural selection, is not the only process leading to change over time. Oh, hey, wait! They already pretty much do. Sorry to defeat your main thesis, but I don’t know that just because natural selection can’t explain all of evolution that automatically means God is involved.

I think my dad was right.

Tags: Science, Radio, technology, Podcast, Podcasting, News, Media

Anyway, this article led to a debate with my husband over alternatives to natural selection because I felt that the basis of Mr. Johnson’s entire argument was fundamentally flawed. Evolution can not be explained by natural selection alone, and I think that most scientists will agree. While natural selection is an incredibly important force in evolution, there are random events that occasionally reset the playing field so to speak: asteroids, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, etc. It doesn’t matter how fit you are if the earth suddenly opens up beneath your feet. These random events allow niches to open, and new opportunities for competition to arise.

This topic led to the idea of whether changes due to experience during life could be transferred vertically to offspring? I know that the concept seems Lamarkian in nature, but maybe he was just using the wrong examples. So, we got to brainstorming. How would that be possible?

Here are a few of our ideas:
1) Stress effects increasing mutation rate in sex cells – this would likely be fairly random change.
2) Stress affecting somatic cells and causing them to increase the mutation rates of specific genes within the sex cells – this would be more directed, or Lamarckian in nature.
3) active DNA may not be only source of genetic material – RNA pools could contain ancestral genes held in an archive to be used at later times. Arabidopsis, as an example, was recently shown to have genetic material arising from somewhere outside the protein productive elements of DNA… from past generations in a non-mendelian manner.

Genetics is becoming more and more complex. It seems that genes are not the only players in the game. They are controlled and regulated up and down the genome by enzymes, co-factors, hormones, sugars, you name it. An essay in PLOS by Sean B. Carroll discusses genetic regulation, and the 30 year old hypothesis that it only now seems possible to test. Scientific advancement is finally allowing us to realize where our old theories fall short. In genetics, it seems, just as people have started to become comfortable with the words and syntax of the genome, the grammar itself may be far different from expected.

I find it fascinating to think that there may be a paradigm shift in the way that we think about genetics and evolution. Finally, ideas that have been around in the fringes for years may actually become integrated into our view. Will science or God continue to fill in the gaps?

Back to the Johnson essay… his final point proving for himself the existence of God in the gaps is human speech. What about the miracle of human speech? Did God intervene to give man speech, which then allowed him to reason and go on to create society? It is a possibility, but recent scientific evidence suggests that we may have developed the neural hardware for speech far earlier than speech actually arose.

I read on The Loom that an area of the brain has been found in chimpanzees, which is equivalent in structure and function to Broca’s area. Broca’s area in humans is responsible for the production of speech. People with damage to Broca’s area are unable to form words although they may be able to understand them just fine. Well, it seems that the neurons in the area in the chimp brain are arranged in a similar manner to ours. When researchers stimulated the neurons, the chimps involved made mouth and jaw movements. All the study can really say is that the area they assessed does in fact control mouth and face movements, and is located in the same place as Broca’s area in the human brain. The location gives it a leg up in function, since it lies between a brain area necessary for the initiation of muscle movement in those areas of the face and another known to be involved in retrieval of memories, namely verbal semantic memory.

In any case, it seems that we have had the neural architecture available for far longer than we have actually been speaking. So, why don’t chimps speak? They lack the necessary anatomy to actually produce speech. Our jaw and soft palate have changed since our split from the rest of the primates to allow us to create the complex sounds we use for speech. Our hyoid bone drops during development and in doing so makes a larger chamber in which our agile tongues may create sounds. (source here)

Chimps don’t make that simple morphological change during development. What if they did? Would that simple change in structure allow chimps to begin to speak? We know that they can understand simple language, they even have their own method of vocal communication. We know that their neural structures responsible for speech production are quite similar to our own. Would they talk if they could?

I think that now the question is: at what point did we begin to speak? Certainly, our primitive speech had nothing in common with the various and sundry languages found around the globe today. But, was it a chance mutation that changed the physical aspect of our throat, and allowed us to begin making more complicated noises with which to communicate? Then was it our social structures that enabled the further development of speech? We may never know. Thankfully, we have science to allow us to search for the answers. And, I’m hoping for a fascinating explanation when they are found.

Thanks for the article, dad. It obviously did what it was intended…

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