Answers for Mark

Mark Torrender of the YouTube channel Talk Beliefs will be interviewing me shortly. In preparation, he sent me these questions. Here are my immediate answers.

1) Barry Desborough, thank you very much indeed for coming on to Talk Beliefs, all the way from the South of France! You’re area of expertise is evolutionary psychology, but your interest in evolution and human nature came while you were growing up in Malaysia – can you talk a bit about that?

Thank you for inviting me. Yes. In Malaysia, I was exposed to many races, nationalities, and cultures. I was at boarding school with British, Australian, New Zealander and Nepalese kids. The Malaysian people themselves consist of original Malays, Chinese and Indians. The Brits and the Aussies, particularly, had a 'superior' attitude to the browner groups. I never understood this. It seemed to me that despite our superficial differences, we are basically all the same.

2) A while back I interviewed Dr Zach Moore and we spoke about the misconceptions and misunderstandings surrounding evolution. Barry, what are the most common misconceptions and why they are wrong?

Oh, there are so many misconceptions!

1) Evolution has something to say about the origin of life. It just doesn't. It says how and why life - er - evolves.
2) It has something to say about the origin of the universe. No. That's cosmology.
3) It is atheistic. No. Many (most) religious organisations and people accept evolutionary science.
4) It is a religion. No. That's just nonsense. But what's so wrong with religion anyway?
5) There is a distinction to be made between "microevolution" and "macroevolution". This is never explained.
6) Mutations can only cause damage. No. Back mutations readily falsify this idea.
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3) Barry – creationists who believe in a biblical or spiritual beginning to the universe will outright reject evolution in a lot of cases, and say that there is no good proof for it. In your blog you talk about ERVs or endogenous retroviruses. What exactly are ERVs and why are they a good proof of evolution?

See answers 0 and 1 in my FAQ. Basically, ERVs are "watermarks" that retroviruses have written into our genomes and in those of other species, the presence of which can only be explained by common ancestry between those species - chimps and humans, for example.

4) Ok – so ERVs are an excellent proof of evolution in action. What other ways can we look around us today, look at ourselves and other species, and see that evolution is a fact and that it explains how life as we know it came to be?

I think one of the best resources that answers this question is Theobald's 29+ Evidences for Macroevolution. A little dated now, but it does give the broad range of lines of evidence for evolution. In science, when several independent lines of evidence converge on the same explanation, we can be pretty sure that the explanation is correct.

5) Barry, you manage several facebook groups concerning evolution, and also have worked on Wikipedia – can you talk a little bit about these projects?

They say, "Once a teacher, always a teacher". I'm a trained and experienced teacher, now retired. I love explaining things to people. I was also a software engineer. It has been my dream to found a "Wikipedia for children", but I have struggled to get the idea off the ground. Here is a prototype.  I shall be attempting to re-launch the idea shortly. Watch this space. 

6) Why do you think creationists are so resistant to evolution being a proven fact? Obviously they have a religious agenda, but underneath it all what do you think upsets them so much about it?

I think that they are unable to envisage any other way of looking at the world. Either that, or it frightens them. They think they will be cast adrift in a world where there is no certainty, no basis for morality, and no meaning. I have this image in my mind of someone clinging to the sole palm-tree on a desert island, battered by a hurricane. The stronger the wind, the more tenaciously they cling to it.

7) Thanks so much Barry for talking to us and I’ll make sure there are links to your blogs in the description below.

It's my pleasure, Mark. Links are provided in my answers above.

Barry, before we close, if there's anyone who's come across this interview and who is very sceptical or resistant to the reality of evolution and why it matters, what would you say to them right now?

Theodosius Dobzhansky famously said, "Nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution". I would say that nothing about the human condition makes any sense except in its light. If you want to be an effective moral agent in this world, you need to understand how it really works.

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