All you conservatives will be relieved to know that we have sighted a moonbat anti-evolutionist. It's that New Age con-man, Deepak Chopra, and he says all the same stupid things the right-wing fundies do. He's complaining that we have to take Intelligent Design out of the hands of the fundamentalist Christians and those clueless scientists. You know, though, when someone says something like this…

To say the DNA happened randomly is like saying that a hurricane could blow through a junk yard and produce a jet plane.

…it doesn't matter whether he's right-wing or left-wing, he's just an idiot. Then he lists a collection of 'problems' that only reveal how uninformed he is.

1. How does nature take creative leaps? In the fossil record there are repeated gaps that no "missing link" can fill. The most glaring is the leap by which inorganic molecules turned into DNA. For billions of years after the Big Bang, no other molecule replicated itself. No other molecule was remotely as complicated. No other molecule has the capacity to string billions of pieces of information that remain self-sustaining despite countless transformations into all the life forms that DNA has produced.

The earth is over 4.5 billion years old, and the universe is somewhere around 13-14 billion years old. I would suggest that the reason there was a gap between the Big Bang and the formation of complex macromolecules on earth is that the Earth didn't exist for 9 or 10 billion years.

Here's another molecule: RNA.

I don't even know what he's talking about when he babbles about "self-sustaining despite countless transformations". It's just word salad.

2. If mutations are random, why does the fossil record demonstrate so many positive mutations--those that lead to new species--and so few negative ones? Random chance should produce useless mutations thousands of times more often than positive ones.

Ummmm…SELECTION? The fossil record contains representatives of the forms that succeeded, not the frequent failures.

3. How does evolution know where to stop? The pressure to evolve is constant; therefore it is hard to understand why evolution isn't a constant. Yet sharks and turtles and insects have been around for hundreds of millions of years without apparent evolution except to diversify among their kind. These species stopped in place while others, notably hominids, kept evolving with tremendous speed, even though our primate ancestors didn't have to. The many species of monkeys which persist in original form tell us that human evolution, like the shark's, could have ended. Why didn't it?

Wow. That's just…special.

Evolution doesn't stop. We're still spinning out mutations all the time; selection is a conservative process that prunes out variations unless there is a change in circumstances. When he claims that sharks and turtles and insects are unchanged, that's just his ignorance talking. Those groups have all been changing, and the fossil record shows that.

Monkeys have been evolving, too. Every lineage is changing independently.

4. Evolutionary biology is stuck with regard to simultaneous mutations. One kind of primordial skin cell, for example, mutated into scales, fur, and feathers. These are hugely different adaptations, and each is tremendously complex. How could one kind of cell take three different routs purely at random?

Look at an embryo. One cell→hundreds of different cell types.

And evolution is not purely random.

5. If design doesn't imply intelligence, why are we so intelligent? The human body is composed of cells that evolved from one-celled blue-green algae, yet that algae is still around. Why did DNA pursue the path of greater and greater intelligence when it could have perfectly survived in one-celled plants and animals, as in fact it did?

Aaaargh! If we evolved from algae, why is there still algae? A trait that is beneficial to one organism is not necessarily beneficial to another.

6. Why do forms replicate themselves without apparent need? The helix or spiral shape found in the shell of the chambered nautilus, the center of sunflowers, spiral galaxies, and DNA itself seems to be such a replication. It is mathematically elegant and appears to be a design that was suited for hundreds of totally unrelated functions in nature.

Yes, it is mathematically elegant, and it is an efficent pattern for growth. And that is the answer.

7. What happens when simple molecules come into contact with life? Oxygen is a simple molecule in the atmosphere, but once it enters our lungs, it becomes part of the cellular machinery, and far from wandering about randomly, it precisely joins itself with other simple molecules, and together they perform cellular tasks, such as protein-building, whose precision is millions of times greater than anything else seen in nature. If the oxygen doesn't change physically--and it doesn't--what invisible change causes it to acquire intelligence the instant it contacts life?

I'm stunned. Oxygen gets intelligent?

Chopra apparently doesn't know a lick of chemistry and doesn't understand reaction equilibria or respiratory physiology. He's an MD? Can we get his license revoked?

Yes, the molecules wander about randomly. Their properties are stochastic.

8. How can whole systems appear all at once? The leap from reptile to bird is proven by the fossil record. Yet this apparent step in evolution has many simultaneous parts. It would seem that Nature, to our embarrassment, simply struck upon a good idea, not a simple mutation. If you look at how a bird is constructed, with hollow bones, toes elongated into wing bones, feet adapted to clutching branches instead of running, etc., none of the mutations by themselves give an advantage to survival, but taken altogether, they are a brilliant creative leap. Nature takes such leaps all the time, and our attempt to reduce them to bits of a jigsaw puzzle that just happened to fall into place to form a beautifully designed picture seems faulty on the face of it. Why do we insist that we are allowed to have brilliant ideas while Nature isn't?

The changes do have advantages on their own. The man knows nothing about bird evolution or evolution of respiratory systems. Birds didn't appear fully formed and complete; they evolved from theropod dinosaurs, and the appearance of different components of the full complement of features can be tracked in the lineage.

9. Darwin's iron law was that evolution is linked to survival, but it was long ago pointed out that "survival of the fittest" is a tautology. Some mutations survive, and therefore we call them fittest. Yet there is no obvious reason why the dodo, kiwi, and other flightless birds are more fit; they just survived for a while. DNA itself isn't fit at all; unlike a molecule of iron or hydrogen, DNA will blow away into dust if left outside on a sunny day or if attacked by pathogens, x-rays, solar radiation, and mutations like cancer. The key to survival is more than fighting to see which organism is fittest.

Oh, just go read this, you foolish old poop.

10. Competition itself is suspect, for we see just as many examples in Nature of cooperation. Bees cooperate, obviously, to the point that when a honey bee stings an enemy, it acts to save the whole hive. At the moment of stinging, a honeybee dies. In what way is this a survival mechanism, given that the bee doesn't survive at all? For that matter, since a mutation can only survive by breeding--"survival" is basically a simplified term for passing along gene mutations from one generation to the next-how did bees develop drones in the hive, that is, bees who cannot and never do have sex?

Inclusive fitness. Drones are males; they are reproductive. Worker females do not reproduce, and we understand why.

11. How did symbiotic cooperation develop? Certain flowers, for example, require exactly one kind of insect to pollinate them. A flower might have a very deep calyx, or throat, for example than only an insect with a tremendously long tongue can reach. Both these adaptations are very complex, and they serve no outside use. Nature was getting along very well without this symbiosis, as evident in the thousands of flowers and insects that persist without it. So how did numerous generations pass this symbiosis along if it is so specialized?

These are examples of evolutionary arms races. The flowers had a short calyx and the birds a shorter beak, for example, and variant flowers with deeper calyxes were more likely to entice pollinators deeply enough to pick up their gametes, while birds with longer beaks were better able to quickly tap their nectar.

12. Finally, why are life forms beautiful? Beauty is everywhere in Nature, yet it serves no obvious purpose. Once a bird of paradise has evolved its incredibly gorgeous plumage, we can say that it is useful to attract mates. But doesn't it also attract predators, for we simultaneously say that camouflaged creatures like the chameleon survive by not being conspicuous. In other words, exact opposites are rationalized by the same logic. This is no logic at all. Non-beautiful creatures have survived for millions of years, so have gorgeous ones. The notion that this is random seems weak on the face of it.

We find some creatures beautiful, and others not, and he doesn't see the logic…so therefore it can't be chance? That doesn't make sense.

As for why different animals follow different strategies, why is that puzzling? If there are different solutions to solve a problem, and you've got lots of organisms trying randomly generated solutions, you will see exactly what he describes.

Deepak Chopra is a disgrace to the medical profession. That he peddles snake oil is bad enough, but this article of his also shows how deeply stupid the man is.

I caught a few minutes of this smug fraud on Larry King tonight—I just about threw a shoe through the screen. How did this guy get a medical degree, specialize in neuroendocrinology, and become chief of staff at a regional medical center while being so poorly educated that he can argue about pulmonary function requiring that an oxygen molecule acquire intelligence? I feel like I'm going to have to give my doctor a test in basic physiology on my next visit before I can trust her.

Ed Brayton and DJW saw the whole thing, and now I'm very glad I only caught a few minutes of that travesty. Larry King actually asked this question:

KING: All right, hold on. Dr. Forrest, your concept of how can you out-and-out turn down creationism, since if evolution is true, why are there still monkeys?

Uh, right. And my ancestors came from Sweden, so why the heck are there still Swedes? I see that you find a Windows Media Player version of the non-debate on CNN—I'm not providing a link because, just as my television was in mortal danger from my shoe last night, if I tried to watch it now I'd probably end up snarling with eyes aflame, I'd snap my laptop over my knee, and start rampaging towards the nearest metropolitan area. And I like my laptop.

Man, what did the United States do to deserve such an incompetent press?