Undeniable.

I’ve had three Insider pieces go up in the last 36 hours, on the the Johnny Cueto trade, a few Binghamton Mets prospects, and the Tyler Clippard trade.

Bill Nye’s Undeniable: Evolution and the Science of Creation should be required reading for every American high school student, and I’d hand the book to anyone who indicated s/he plans on voting in our next election. Nye demolishes the many ignorant anti-evolution arguments out there, while eloquently and ardently presenting a case for science in a world of denial and fear-mongering.

The title refers to the persistence of evolution deniers, those folks who refuse to accept the scientific proof of evolution because it interferes with other aspects of their worldview. Nye engaged in a well-known debate with a particularly ardent denier, Ken Ham, who also refuses to accept the actual age of the earth, substituting his own fiction (I believe he says it’s 6000 years old, although some other deniers go with 10,000 years, not that it matters in the least because they’re wrong) for geological fact much as he substitutes his own fiction (that the first book of the Christian Bible is the literal truth of our creation) for biological fact. That debate, in which Nye clowned Ham, who continually referred to the Bible as his “evidence,” was one of the spurs for Nye to write Undeniable, but it serves more broadly as a frontal assault on the anti-science/anti-intellectual movement that hinders or prevents us from facing major societal or global problems, from disease eradication to feeding the planet to slowing anthropomorphic climate change.

The book should convince anyone who still denies evolution yet is willing to listen to some basic facts. We know now that all mammals descended from a common ancestor that lived some 70 million years ago, something demonstrated by patterns in the fossil record and the similarities between our DNA and those of many species seemingly unrelated to us. We’re barely distinguishable at the DNA level from chimpanzees, sharing 99% of our DNA with the related primates called bonobos, while we share about half of our DNA sequences with bananas (themselves the product of cloning; every yellow banana you eat is a Cavendish and is genetically identical to all of the other Cavendishes in the world). NOTE: I edited the common ancestor bit, as I conflated two numbers when writing this review from memory. Thanks to the readers on FB who pointed this out.

He attacks some of the most common (and dumb) creationist arguments against evolution, swatting them down like so many genetically-similar-to-human fruit flies. The argument that evolution violates the second law of thermodynamics fails because that law only applies to closed systems, whereas the Earth – getting energy from that big yellow ball in the sky – is very much an open system. The argument from irreducible complexity, that current organisms are too complex to be explained without an Official Designer™, fails on multiple counts, not the least of which is all of the suboptimal designs we see in nature; Nye even mentions ulnar collateral ligaments for pitchers in an amusing aside on this topic. He points out more significantly that the only reason you’d see the “designs” we see in nature are as the result of a process of incremental changes through genetic mutations, and that the “what good is half a wing?” variation of this argument misstates how features like wings evolved. He takes down the false dichotomy of macroevolution versus microevolution (which creationists claim is only “adaptation”), including how the latter is the inevitable result of the former – and how there’s plenty of tangible proof of the latter, despite what Ken Ham might claim.

Once Nye has explained the theory of evolution by way of the various insubstantial criticisms levied at it by creationists, he takes on multiple issues that are related to or follow naturally from our understanding of evolution, all of which are significant issues in the science policy sphere.

* GMOs. Nye has already walked back some of his criticisms from this chapter after taking fire from the scientific community at large, although the concerns he raises about the introduction of DNA from distant species into food crops – notably that their effects on the crops’ ecosystems are difficult to predict – are valid. Humans are particularly terrible at foreseeing unintended consequences, as explained in The Invisible Gorilla and demonstrated in nearly every public-policy decision or the entire Bud Selig reign in MLB, and such genetic modifications entail lots of unpredictable ramifications. Nye has continued to raise the alarm about the massive reduction in the monarch butterfly population thanks to the widespread use of glyphosphate, the enzyme-inhibiting herbicide marketed as Roundup, which has decimated the natural supply of milkweed plants. You should plant some in your yard if you’re in the right part of the country; we have for the last two summers and were rewarded in 2014 with several visiting monarch caterpillars.

* Abortion. Nye points out that the claim that life begins at conception is untenable, as a successfully fertilized human embryo may fail to implant in the uterine wall or fail to successfully undergo gastrulation; if such eggs are considered to be alive and human, then a woman who miscarries for these reasons has committed murder. Nye broaches the topic when discussing stem cells and the concerns, most of which are baseless, about harvesting such cells from fertilized embryos that would otherwise be headed for the sewer.

* Antibiotic drug resistance. If you’ve read my stuff for a while, you know this is a huge issue for me, particularly as it relates to food safety. The problem exists because evolution is true: bacteria that have beneficial mutations that allow them to survive an antibiotic purge reproduce and eventually spread, leading to resistant strains that defeat our drugs. We can’t ever win this battle, but we can certainly fight it more intelligently than we do now.

* Race. It’s not real – that is, not biologically real. Race is a social construct, and Nye explains why.

* Space exploration. Ah, here’s where Nye and I diverge in our views. Nye discusses the possibility of life on other bodies within our solar system, naming a few likely candidates (Mars, Europa, Enceladus), and argues in favor of fairly expensive missions to try to determine if there is life of the microbial variety on any of these planets or satellites. I won’t try to paraphrase his case for fear of doing it an injustice, but I did not find the case satisfactory. A multi-billion dollar mission like this has to have a significant potential payoff for us, and he doesn’t provide one. Knowing there’s life on other worlds would be interesting, but does it advance our knowledge in any practical or meaningful fashion? How would it? Perhaps we’d find microbes that can produce energy in a novel way, or that can consume chemicals that are pollutants on earth … but he doesn’t even broach those possibilities. And, of course, that $10 billion or $20 billion mission has a very high probability of finding no life at all, so the potential payout has to exceed the cost by a significant factor.

* Another chapter, on the evolutionary explanations for altruism, also fell a bit short of the mark for me, but for different reasons. I’m strictly a lay reader on this, and can’t put my opinions on the matter on par with those of Nye or his sources, but it seems even after reading Nye’s explanation that the evolutionary psychology explanation for human altruism is too post hoc – crafting a narrative to fit the facts, rather than working from the facts forward as evolutionary biologists have done. The comparison of human altruism to altruistic behavior in other species also struck me as facile, an argument by weak analogy that did not address the extent or nuance of human altruistic behaviors.

Nye does not explicitly offer any arguments against religion or theism, although he is arguing heavily against creationism, Intelligent Design, and any sort of Creator force behind life on this planet. He also makes several points that are inherently anti-religious, such as the fact that we are not “special” from a genetic perspective and the fact that we aren’t the end product of evolution because evolution has no end product. Nye points out that some readers may find these points depressing, but says he finds evolution and the march of science inspiring, especially because of the breadth of knowledge out there waiting for us to discover it.

I listened to Nye’s narration of the Audible audio edition of Undeniable, and there is no question in my mind that he made the book more enjoyable for me. He brings tremendous enthusiasm to the subject, and his comic timing and delivery are effortless and natural. It’s hard to hear him exude over these topics and not feel his excitement or his indignation. Nye says he wrote this book because teaching anti-scientific topics like creationism hurts our children and our country, a point with which I agree wholeheartedly. Hearing those words from his mouth made the message seem more potent.

Comments

  1. Just a small point re your comments on the abortion section of the book (Admittedly which I have not read, and am simply working off the above summary). I think the statement (while perhaps illustrative) that if someone believes life begins at conception, then a woman who miscarries commits a murder, is not accurate, or helpful, and certainly does not follow logically (assuming you define murder as the law in the United States does). Murder requires a Mens Rea or intent that goes along with the act (in other words to commit a murder you have to intend a killing). I think you would be hard pressed to find anyone who considers a miscarriage intentional in the vast majority of cases.

    To be clear, this is less a distinction of the definition or timing or a life (or the potential for a life) as to a distinction about what constitutes murder, which, while may vary slightly by jurisdiction, never includes unintentional killings. Even if you wanted to claim this type of miscarriage would constitute a manslaughter or negligent homicide, I do not believe that those similar claims would stand up to scrutiny under the law either for the same reasons barring extreme or unusual circumstances.

    All the above being said, thanks for the review, and I will be very excited to read the book

    • To be fair, I don’t recall if he used the word “murder” specifically, but he did question whether it would be considered criminal – e.g., manslaughter, although I feel sure he didn’t use that word.

      I think his general point was that the distinction between what tissues are considered to be a human being and what aren’t is not satisfactorily answered by the anti-abortion viewpoint that a fertilized egg is a person. Again, I’m paraphrasing and interpreting, but I think that’s his take.

  2. Great review, Keith. Unfortunately, I feel like this kind of book is wonderfully valuable for people who want to know more about the science behind these topics, but is borderline worthless if the real goal is to convince people who are science-deniers that they are wrong. Specifically, your statement “The book should convince anyone who still denies evolution yet is willing to listen to some basic facts” feels like it applies to approximately nobody. If people have been unwilling to listen to facts that contradict their religious beliefs thus far, they’re likely going to continue that even with well laid out explanations. Similarly, if people are open to scientific explanation, they likely wouldn’t be evolution deniers today.

    So…I might be interested in reading it, but, sadly, that’s really different from thinking that it’s going to convince anyone.

  3. I can only imagine what’s going to erupt in the comments here. Get some marshmallows. That said, I’m a huge Bill Nye fan, so I can’t wait to read this one.

  4. I’ll weigh in as a religious person who also loved this book (and reviewed it on my blog), just in case you’re flooded with the other side. I’ve been convinced of evolution for some time now, and this is definitely a book I’d recommend for deniers.

    As for the search for life, I’m for funding it (though I generally frown on runaway spending) just on the off chance that finding life on Europa shuts up some of the more vocal creationists. Not that it will. Sigh.

  5. I’m with Bob. Those that have an open mind don’t need this book and the deniers won’t accept anything anyway.

  6. As a Christian, Ken Ham is sort of like the family’s crazy conspiracy theory believing uncle. I don’t understand why Christians take Genesis 1 to be communicating scientific truths when a simple reading of the text seems to make that pretty clear. I will say I’m a little surprised that Nye takes his scientific beliefs and then applies them to moral debates, like abortion. This is a quote from an Embryology textbook: “A zygote is the beginning of a new human being. Human development begins at fertilization, the process during which a male gamete or sperm … unites with a female gamete or oocyte … to form a single cell called a zygote. This highly specialized, totipotent cell marks the beginning of each of us as a unique individual.”

    So one embryology textbook disagrees with Nye, and at what point in the process does the unborn start to count as a human being?

    You wrote:” Nye points out that the claim that life begins at conception is untenable, as a successfully fertilized human embryo may fail to implant in the uterine wall or fail to successfully undergo gastrulation; if such eggs are considered to be alive and human, then a woman who miscarries for these reasons has committed murder. ”

    This is a total non-sequitur. Miscarriages are through no design of the mother, there was no choice being made. The woman is no more a murderer than a person who survives a car accident even if their child dies in the accident and the parent took every precaution. There’s a difference between a tragic accident vs. the willful killing of a life.

  7. Thanks for the review; downloaded the audiobook because of it.

    Two books you need to read: “Sapiens” by Yaval Harrari and “Faith versus Fact” by Jerry Coyne. You won’t regret either.

  8. Discovering microbial life on Mars or in the oceans of Europa or Ganymede would advance our knowledge of the universe in a meaningful fashion. We would understand that life exists outside of the friendly confines of earth. “Are we alone in the universe?” is a question humans have been asking for thousands of years. Spending $20 billion to potentially answer that question seems like a decent investment.

    Even if the mission failed to discover life, Oxford philosopher Nick Bostrom argues that result would be good news for humanity (http://www.nickbostrom.com/extraterrestrial.pdf). It could potentially indicate that The Great Filter is behind us, and life is rare in the universe.

    • But how does answering that question help us? Is there a tangible benefit to humanity? $20 billion there versus $20 billion to plant trees or develop renewable energy sources or help eliminate antibiotic overuse … there has to be a better ROI than merely answering a question.

  9. I’ve deleted all of Derek’s comments and my replies. After an unsatisfactory (for both, I assume) email exchange, he’s made it clear that he’s gone, and I hope the rest of us can resume our civil disagreements around my review of this book. Thanks.

    • Oh, and if anyone else reads/has read the book and would like to offer suggestions for improving my summary of the section on abortion and stem cells, please post them here. Again, I wrote this from memory, and I know there are some mistakes throughout the piece because I didn’t have a hard copy to which I could refer.

  10. “[F]ertilized embryos that would otherwise be headed for the sewer.”

    Were you able to keep your lunch down while typing that?

    • Pretty close to (my memory of) his actual wording.

      Think about it, though: We treat unfertilized human eggs as trash or sewage. Those are just cells to be discarded. Fertilized eggs get a totally different reaction from most people, although, as Nye points out, people often store them in cryogenics labs and, eventually, those are disposed of as well.

    • Did Nye mention anything about when, scientifically, he believes that life begins? Does it begin at gastrulation? Does it begin when the fertilized embryo implants the uterine wall? Does it begin at birth? Does it begin an hour after birth?

      Or does he simply lump in the anti-scientific evolution “debate” with the very real abortion debate? Is the pro-life side “denial and fear-mongering”?

      If Nye (or yourself) really wants to help change public opinion on fairly settled scientific claims like global warming or evolution, it might be best to lend more respect to the pro-life arguments. At the very least, don’t attack the anti-abortion stance with the same sword as the anti-evolution stance. Abortion is so much more complex, since it involves a level of moral reasoning far beyond that of the evolution and global warming issues.

      At the very least, I certainly don’t think that Nye’s lectures on abortion should be “required reading” for high school students or any future American voters.

    • He stays more to the line that you can’t say when life begins, not to the extent that those who argue it begins at conception claim. And I think you’ve gotten the wrong impression (for which I must bear at least some responsibility) about the chapter where Nye discusses these issues. It’s neither a “lecture on abortion” nor a claim that anti-abortion advocates are denialists, but a way of getting at the very real and critical discussion about stem cell research, which has been hindered by a connection to the abortion debate, one that isn’t merited.

  11. Thanks for the review, Keith. The National Institutes of Health says this about the rate of miscarriage:

    “Around half of all fertilized eggs die and are lost (aborted) spontaneously, usually before the woman knows she is pregnant. Among women who know they are pregnant, the miscarriage rate is about 15-20%. Most miscarriages occur during the first 7 weeks of pregnancy. The rate of miscarriage drops after the baby’s heart beat is detected.”

    So pro-lifers can say that abortion is always murder, but they are ignoring the work of the most prolific abortionist of all: their God.

  12. I haven’t read the book but I don’t understand why it follows that if evolution is true, then there is no sort of “Creator force” behind life on this planet. I realize you (Keith) didn’t say that in your review, but it sounds as if Nye did. Frankly, I’ve never heard a logical counter-argument to Aristotle’s argument for the existence of an unmoved mover (a God of some type as we commonly use the word). Whether that unmoved mover (if one exists) could be behind life (as it has evolved) on this planet (a “Creator force” of some type who) seems to be an argument science can’t answer.

    • Meant to type that it was a “question” science can’t answer.

    • Nye doesn’t say there is no Creator, and even acknowledges the First Cause argument (essentially saying that’s unknowable), but he does say that there’s no room for a designer within evolution’s processes.

      My own personal question about the unmoved mover argument is who made the mover. Or, as the old joke goes, is it just turtles all the way down?

  13. I wish you had said more about this:

    ” Race. It’s not real – that is, not biologically real. Race is a social construct, and Nye explains why.”

    You and I exchanged some thoughts on this matter a few weeks ago, and I think we are largely on the same page. However, I do not understand what it means when people say race is not a real thing. There are real, measurable biological differences between people who trace their lineage back to Africa vs. Asia vs. Europe. These biological differences help to explain things like Tay Sachs disease disproportionately affecting some populations, or why nearly all marathons are won by people who come from northeast Africa, or the exceedingly high rates of hypertension in African American males above the age of 40.

    I might be willing to accept that racism is (at least partly) a social construct–that choosing to assign higher/lower status based on these biological differences is a conscious (or subconscious) choice that people make. But I am unclear why anyone might assert that the biological differences themselves do not exist.

    • The post was just getting too long, so I cut that one short and tried to be cute about it. Not my best work, I guess.

      He talks about the evolutionary/genetic history of skin color variations and uses that as the basis of the argument: we are all fundamentally the same, and any of these perceived differences are illusory ones caused by bottlenecking (like Tay-Sachs or sickle cell). Again, I’m not making the argument, but trying to paraphrase his.

  14. Keith,

    I haven’t read the book (yet), but it left me wondering about your dissatisfaction with the altruism chapter. If you haven’t already, please read E.O. Wilson’s “The Conquest of the Earth”.

    Again, I haven’t read Nye’s take on it, or his efforts to explain it, but I suspect he may have drawn information from this book. It’s a great read.