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As I continue with my post on Information Theory, I must confess that there was an ulterior motive for the previous post that I presented, and a quick explanation can now be made. A few months ago I learned about certain viruses that replicate by having their RNA read in three separate frames. Each frame is necessary for the replication of the virus, because if the RNA is only read in the “normal” way then it would not give all the amino acids needed by the virus to replicate. The alternate frames (starting at the second and third nucleotide) were therefore critical for the successful reproduction of the virus.

Since the best way to explain this is actually by example, I’d spent some time wondering how to come up with a good example. Thankfully, I was afforded the opportunity at work the other day due to some shenanigans that happened with a couple of my co-workers. One of my friends, Travis, is a huge Star Trek fan. He’s got a model of the Enterprise sitting on the shelf in his cubicle. Or rather, he had a model of the Enterprise sitting on the shelf by his cubicle, since one of his other friends, Jeff, had stolen it over a week ago.

It quickly became apparent that Travis did not know it was missing. As a result, on Friday Jeff came up with a plan to “ransom” the model back to Travis by setting up a fake e-mail account. In the meantime, one of our other coworkers has been taking several pictures of a gnome in random locations, so I suggested to Jeff that he get a picture with that gnome. The end result is this ransom picture.

After the photo was taken, I came up with an idea. Rather than make it easy for Travis to figure out what was going on, we could make a secret code for him to crack. At the same time, I realized this would work for my illustration of Information Theory. So I wrote up the code and put it in my previous post. Then we sent Travis on a long scavenger hunt to finally claim his stolen Enterprise (although in reality the scavenger hunt was completely pointless because it lead nowhere and in the end Jeff just gave the model back anyway).

The only clue that I gave Travis was a link to my previous post on Information Theory as well as the instructions about “First letter. Last letter. One is forward, one is not.” From that, you can look at my previous post and see that it spells out the following hidden messages. The first letter of each sentence spells out “DON’T TRUST THE SMILE O’ THE GNOME WHO ROAMS OVER THE EARTH HERE” backwards (with punctuation added for clarity) and the last letter of each sentence spells out: “i saw travis’s enterprise go in the shredder box by kayla’s cube.” (By the way, this was a factual, yet misleading, statement. I actually wrote “Travis’s Enterprise” on a piece of paper and put it in the shredder box, hoping that Travis would get Building Services to open the box and reveal the paper…but due to the fact that Travis’s department was short-handed Friday, he was unable to do this.)

Obviously, if I was only intending to play a prank on a co-worker I would not have posted anything on Triablogue—I would have just kept that on my personal site. However, since I got a wonderful opportunity to use this as an example for Information Theory, I thought it was worth putting on the T-Blog too.

Anyone could have read my original post and it would have made sense as it was written. Due to the constraints of the hidden message, of course, the previous post seemed (at least to me) to be a little stilted in places, but it still conveyed information so that it was a worthwhile piece in its first reading frame (the straightforward reading on the blog post). The first level of the post provided information, and it was of such complexity that I would argue the very existence of the post proves that there was an intelligence guiding the writing of the post. It was not randomly put together.

Suppose, however, that someone wished to argue that there must have been a naturalistic explanation for that surface level reading. If we stipulate that the rules of grammar must be followed, then we could say that words were randomly put together via mutations of the alphabet. Those words that most closely matched the grammatical rules in place were selected for. Over time, the post would have been written by purely naturalistic, non-intelligent processes. This is, in other words, the way that Darwinists claim DNA and RNA came about.

Even if we grant all this to the Darwinist (a huge concession, mind you, but let’s not worry about it right now), we are immediately confronted with the fact that reading the first letter of each sentences backwards provides information too. Thus, not only must there have been a rule in place governing the straightforward meaning of the text, but there must have been a Darwinian selection process governing information from the first letter of each sentence. Furthermore, there must have been another one governing how to read the last letter of each sentence too.

It should be obvious to everyone that this is too complicated to be explained by naturalistic, non-intelligent, random mutations. Yet this textual analogy occurs in the very viruses with RNA sequencing.

When it comes to information theory, typically the shorter something is the less information is contained. Thus, a book that has only 10,000 words contains less information than a book that contains 20,000 words. And DNA that is 5 million bases long has less information than DNA that has three billion bases.

This, however, does not take into account intentional compression of information. My previous post was 893 words long. Yet it provided information not only in those 893 words, but in two hidden messages that added another 25 words. In other words, another text that is 910 words long but that does not have these hidden messages contains less information than my 893 word long post did despite it being longer.

But the increase in the complexity is seen not just in the message itself. In order to glean the extra hidden messages one must know how to read it. Therefore, one must know three separate methods of reading to gain all 918 words of information in that post. This means it is not sufficient to know the basic rules of grammar: you must know what to look for and where to find it in what order for the hidden messages too.

The same thing is true for RNA that is used by viruses. If the virus must have three separate frameworks in order to reproduce, the RNA sequence can be much shorter—yet it hides such complexity that it is astronomically more intricate than a similar string of RNA nucleotides. Since it must be read in three frameworks, the code must be able to function not simply in a straightforward manner but in two completely different ways too. Furthermore, the cell that the virus uses to reproduce must somehow be able to decode this complexity and reproduce the virus.

While it was fairly simple for me to come up with a hidden code for my previous post, it is somewhat more difficult to come up with three-letter codons that will encode amino acids in multiple ways. Indeed, it would be analogous to condensing the alphabet into 20 characters (this can be done by discarding certain letters, like X (which can be represented as a “ks”) and C (either a “k” or an “s” depending on the sound you need). The 20 characters would represent the 20 amino acids. Using four bases (ACTG) you would need to construct an alphabet of 64 variations, where for instance AAA = A, AAC = B, AAT = D, AAG = E, ACA = F, etc. When that is done, you will find it easy enough to write a straightforward coded text with English rules, but it is vastly more difficult to write a text that is correct English both in the first and second reading frame, let alone adding on the third reading frame.

In short, as close as we can come to simulating the way RNA works for certain viruses we have a tremendous difficulty grasping how this can all fit together. Yet viruses are supposedly the simplest life-forms. And we haven’t even begun to deal with issues such as the exons and introns.

The existence of such viruses, and the methods by which information is conveyed via nucleotides, provides strong evidence for Intelligent Design simply because of the vast complexities hidden within even the simplest looking strands.

Ever so often, I like to look at aspects of Darwinian theory that are overlooked, as a kind of vox populi. Right now that takes the form of studying various types of Information Theories. Examining information is important due to the fact that mutations occur within DNA. How DNA (and RNA) conveys information coded within its strands to build proteins and such, therefore, is necessary for a complete understanding of what Darwinians attempt to show. Hence my current examination of it.

The first thing I would like to examine is not obvious, however. Rather, it is a reproduction of a technique employed by some viruses coded via RNA. As with DNA, RNA is formed with amino acid bases that form three-letter “codons” that are then used to form the various viruses, such as HIV. Each three-letter codon, however, can be read more than one way depending on where one starts, which we will designate by the Roman numerals I, II, and III. Essentially, the first version will be the I, the second will be II, and the third III, as should be obvious.

Here it might help to see some examples. The RNA sequence might start with ACUGUGCAA, each of these letters referring to a specific nucleotide. (RNA uses Uracil (U) instead of Thymine (T) in the DNA codon.) Every codon has three nucleotides to code its amino acid compliment. Variations in the above sequence will depend on the starting point that you choose. One might be “ACU” (I) or “CUG” (II) or “UGU” (III) depending on if you start with the first, second, or third nucleotide in the RNA register. Several variations are therefore possible, each coding its own different type of amino acid, depending on where you begin each step. Many codons, it should be pointed out, actually form the same amino acid since three-letter codons give us 64 possibilities and there are only 20 amino acids that can be coded for.

Anyway, with the ability to code different amino acids it is possible to read the same RNA strand in two (or three) different manners, depending on if you start with I or with III. Obviously, if one can convey coherent information with fewer acid bases, more information can be put into single RNA strands. RNA that can be coherently read in various ways would take up fewer resources and thus should be selected for under the Darwinian scheme.

Or that is what we are told Natural Selection should be doing. However, this begs a crucial question too. When a single RNA strand conveys multiple information from various starting points the information value of the strand changes from a strand of equal length due to the fact that there is overlapped information in both the I and the II strands, not to mention the III. Even if we argued that RNA could come about naturally, we are still left with explaining how various strands can all be coherent simultaneously since a codon that can be read in alternate ways conveys more information that a singularly read codon. Moreover, it is rather simple to see that reading something in various ways is not itself as straightforward a task as that! One must know that the alternate strands are important too, since simply encoding the information is not enough. Not being able to decode it provides an insurmountable problem here.

Gathering it all together, then, we see that multiple coding RNA strands actually convey more information than three strands of the same RNA put together in sequences. Even though the multiple coding RNA strand is shorter, it is more complex and, as a result, the information value of that strand is more thorough. Herein lies a problem for the Darwinian theorizer. That multiple coding RNA exists in nature is true. Functionally, however, it becomes an insurmountable barrier to explain, outside of accepting ID. Once RNA is found to contain “hidden” meaning by reading it in alternate frames, and indeed since there are viruses that require this for their existence, it is overwhelmingly difficult to contemplate the amount of information condensed within the strand.

Even the simplest multi-coded strand hides complexity inside. Longer strands are subject to complexity that is just that much greater. Indeed, the complexity is enough to force Darwinism to succumb. Most Darwinists, of course, will not agree, and I do not expect them to. So instead I offer this very post, which not only gives an argument but an example too, demonstrating the complexity to the max. Eventually I will explain how this works, although for the time being I shall remain numb.

However, some may venture a guess already. That is your prerogative, and all I will say is: seek! Three different frames exist to this post’s “RNA.” Simply find them and you’ll see the nature of the complexity. Until this is seen in person, it’s obviously more difficult to comprehend it all.

RNA can be read in different frames, meaning there is more information than you’d recognize at first glance, and it’s no different in DNA. This hides complexity which requires some explanations. Those explanations are difficult to find if your philosophy is Naturalistic. Nevertheless, the conclusion that ID is sound may not be acceptable to you.

One, however, should embrace the truth rather than remaining dumb. Darwinism cannot explain complexity found in the alternate reading frame.

Last month, I was able to watch a screening of Ben Stein’s upcoming movie, Expelled (http://www.getexpelled.com/). Stein was there at the presentation too, so I got to sit through a little Q&A with him. At the time, all viewers had to sign a confidentiality agreement that precluded us from writing reviews about the movie. That restriction was lifted yesterday, however, so today I bring you my review of Expelled.

For those who know absolutely nothing about the film, Expelled is Stein’s look at Intelligent Design and the way that ID proponents are expelled from the “academy” via academic censorship. The basic goal of the film is to publicize the fact that there are professors who question Darwinistic dogma who are then censured for it, who cannot get tenure, who are fired from their jobs, etc. Therefore, on a broad issue, the film is designed simply to publicize the suppression of free-thought by Darwinists and not to provide an apologetic for ID as such.

Since I knew this was the motivation, I watched the film intentionally thinking of what Darwinists would say in response to it. Because of that, when I watched it I found the movie does have some weaknesses. The main drawback to it from the intellectual standpoint is that it relied on a heavy emotional link to Social Darwinism, especially manifest by Hitler’s Darwinism; thus the “intellectual” Darwinist will most certainly respond: “It’s nothing but emotive propaganda with no substance” (which isn’t true, but the emotive aspect was emphasized enough that it did sometimes feel that way even to this ID proponent).

By the way, I should also point out that I don’t think it’s bad in and of itself for the movie to play on the Social Darwinistic evils that have come about; atheists harp on the Crusades enough that they deserve this. And frankly most people are unaware of the links between Eugenics and Darwinism and Planned Parenthood, which are also mentioned in the film along with Hitler and the Communists.

Throughout the film is the metaphor of the Berlin Wall, and Stein ends the film by paralleling Reagan’s famous “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!” speech. The attempt is to get people to know the wall exists so that others will be able to work at chipping it away. The rallying cry is: “We need academic freedom, and that includes the freedom to believe contra-Darwin about origins of life.” I do believe the film captures this goal, and so it succeeds at what it attempts to do.

So to review it, it definitely would get a solid A in my book. And while the movie is only 97 minutes long in the form I saw, Stein told us the DVD is going to have tons more footage and extra features in it, including what will probably become one of the most famous Dawkins interviews, at least for the IDers.

In fact, that interview remains the most memorable portion of the film if, for no other reason, than the fact that I have read so much of Dawkins materials beforehand. Stein had Dawkins looking absolutely flummoxed. During Stein’s interview, Dawkins stated that it was impossible that there is an Intelligent Designer. Stein asked him for a percentage on how sure he is of that idea. Dawkins refuses to give an exact number, then finally decided on 99%. Stein asked: “Couldn’t it be 49% instead?” Dawkins responded with his typical: “No, the probability of a designer is nowhere near half” etc. Then, Stein pressed Dawkins on how the first cell was created, and in the end Dawkins actually acknowledged that he could accept the theory of panspermia (aliens did it). Everyone in the theater laughed, because after just saying it was impossible for intelligent design to have created life on Earth, Dawkins admits that aliens that were “more intellectually advanced than we are” (as close to a direct quote as I can recall from memory of something I saw only once) could have done it after all.

As a funny aside, one of the questions Stein was asked during our forum was: “Do you think you treated Dawkins fairly in the movie?” To which Stein responded (accurately, as those of you who have read Dawkins already know): “I think we treated him charitably. There were many hostile responses he gave that we edited out, where his response was basically, ‘I’m Richard Dawkins and you don’t know what you’re talking about. I’m Richard Dawkins!’” It remains to be seen how much of the entire interview will be in the DVD version of the film.

Naturally, this film will not convince any Darwinist to look at ID…but then, no film could do that. It will hopefully be enough to pry open the door a bit for some so that others can come along with more detailed explanations in the future.

It is rare that an anonymous commenter will write something worth responding to, but one such anonymous comment did occur here. Unfortunately, the other anonymous commenters went the usual path of obstruction. I will therefore first post the entire relevant comment so you don’t have to suffer, and then refute it.

Anonymous said:

Natural selection is really not such a hard concept to “get”. I am no scientist, and yet I can see why a pack of wolves charging a herd of caribous will preferably go after the weaker individuals, hence reducing their chances to pass on their genes to the next generations. It’s a logical behavior motivated by the harsh requirements of their subsistence. (No need to invoke a mysterious force behind it.) Changing environmental conditions, including competition with other predators and preys (who themselves keep evolving) will keep changing the parameters of the equation, and lead to fortune reversals. For example, under certain conditions, it may be advantageous for a given species to become larger. Should the environment change (e.g., isolation of a population from the mainland), the opposite may become true. The fact that natural selection favors one evolution trend under certain conditions, and another (perhaps opposite one) under other conditions, hardly makes it irrelevant.

To go back to the moth example, maybe it’s true that natural selection will lead to the extinction of the slow white ones, given the evolutionary pressure they are facing (see the dodo for a real life example). But let’s not forget that it’s also natural selection that caused them to be slow and white in the first place. They are now at a disadvantage simply because something has changed in their environment. Being fast and dark is temporarily the winning combination of attributes, until something else changes yet again.

As for the relative stability of species, I would venture that fitness to a particular environment is always a matter of optimization under (many) constraints, and the capacity to adapt is one of critical components of success. Many species have become too “perfect” for their own good, and ended up extinct.

First off, I would agree that Natural Selection is not a hard concept to “get” but that is precisely because, as my original argument stated, Natural Selection is trivial. In fact, Darwinists play on their loose defining of this term to their advantage (and we see many examples of this in Anonymous’s post). But let us survey some of the popularist Darwinists. First, let us consult the glossary that Mark Ridley has in his textbook, Evolution to give us the starting framework (note, in all quotes that follow, the italics is in the original):

natural selection The process by which the forms of organisms in a population that are best adapted to the environment increase in frequency relative to less well adapted forms over a number of generations (Ridley, 2004 p. 686).

This leads us to look at the definition of “population” which is:

population A group of organisms, usually a group of sexual organisms that interbreed and share a gene pool (Ripley 2004, p. 687).

Compare this to the definition for fitness:

fitness The average number of offspring produced by individuals with a certain genotype, relative to the number produced by individuals with other genotypes. When genotypes differ in fitness because of their effects on survival, fitness can be measured as the ratio of a genotype’s frequency among the adults divided by its frequency among individuals at birth (Ripley 2004, p. 684).

Now these definitions are fairly dry, but they serve an important purpose. First, they are about as precise as you will ever see a Darwinist define the terms. But how precise is that? Look at the definition for Natural Selection once more. There is nothing in that definition that is inconsistent with Creationism. All Natural Selection is, according to Ripley, is when one population (which is a shared gene pool) increases in number (frequency) because it is the most adapted to the environment while maladapted organisms decrease.

And this is a problem for Creationism because…?

This definition will hardly do for the Darwinist to stake his claims. Let us therefore look at what Ernst Mayr wrote:

Almost all of those who opposed natural selection failed to realize that it is a two-step process. Not realizing this, some opponents have called selection a process of chance and accident, while others have called it deterministic. The truth is that natural selection is both.

At the first step, consisting of all the processes leading to the production of a new zygote (including meiosis, gamete formation, and fertilization), new variation is produced. Chance rules supreme at this step, except that the nature of the changes at a given gene locus is strongly constrained.

At the second step, that of selection (elimination), the “goodness” of the new individual is constantly tested, from the larval (or embryonic) stage until adulthood and its period of reproduction. Those individuals who are most efficient in coping with the challenges of the environment and in competing with other members of their population and with those of other species will have the best chance to survive until the age of reproduction and to reproduce successfully (Mayr 2001, p. 119).

First I must note that if it is true that “[a]lmost all of those who opposed natural selection failed to realize that it is a two-step process” it is equally true that Ripley failed to realize this. In reality, Mayr is synthesizing two aspects of Darwinism together and fusing it all under the term Natural Selection, which is improper. Only the last paragraph of what Mayr wrote actually deals with Natural Selection. That is, selection is a winnowing process; the “first step” Mayr proposes is actually a separate entity, namely chance mutation.

But what is most interesting about this quote is the fact that Mayr seeks to demonstrate that Natural Selection is “deterministic.” And this deterministic pressure is on every stage of the organism, from larva (or fetal) up through reproduction. However, just 22 pages later, Mayr writes:

Much of the differential survival and reproduction in a population are not the result of selection, but rather of chance. Chance operates at every level in the process of reproduction, beginning with the crossing-over of parental chromosomes during meiosis to the survival of the newly formed zygotes. Furthermore, potentially favorable gene combinations are undoubtedly often eliminated by indiscriminate environmental forces such as floods, earthquakes, or volcanic eruptions before natural selection has had the opportunity to favor specific genotypes (Mayr 2001, p. 141).

So which is it? Is it deterministic, or is it chance? Darwinists are hardly clear on this issue, so it’s no wonder their followers cannot speak cogently on it. One thing is certain: Natural Selection cannot be teleological!

Another widespread erroneous view of natural selection must also be refuted: Selection is not teleological (goal-directed). Indeed, how could an elimination process be teleological? Selection does not have a long-term goal. It is a process repeated anew in every generation (Mayr 2001, p. 121).

(Note that this quote on page 121 demonstrates that Mayr is fully aware that Natural Selection is only “an elimination process” and not his two-step process he claimed on page 119.)

So, while Mayr seeks to synthesize two aspects together under the term Natural Selection when it suits him, he is quick to keep them separate when it does not suit him to combine the ideas.

With this in mind, let us return once again to Anonymous’s comments. He said:

I am no scientist, and yet I can see why a pack of wolves charging a herd of caribous will preferably go after the weaker individuals, hence reducing their chances to pass on their genes to the next generations.

I assume that anonymous meant the reduction in chances to pass on genes to the next generation occurs for the “weaker” caribou and not the wolves that pursue them…

In any case, the language of this sentence requires us to ask an immediate question. What does this term “weaker” mean?

It is actually wrong for Darwinists to use the term “stronger” or “weaker” in describing organisms during the process of evolution. In evolution, we are only interested in one thing: the fitness of an organism. The fitness of an organism has nothing to do with ideas of strength (reread the definition provided above) but is only about reproductive success. Indeed, if it did refer to strength and weakness then Darwinism would be teleological after all. It would have a progression. Yet Gould points out:

Darwin waged such a long-standing internal battle over the idea of progress. He found himself in an unresolvable bind. He recognized that his basic theory of evolutionary mechanism–natural selection–makes no statement about progress. Natural selection only explains how organisms alter through time in adaptive response to changes in local environments–”descent with modification,” in Darwin’s words. Darwin identified this denial of general progress in favor of local adjustment as the most radical feature of his theory. To the American paleontologist (and former inhabitant of my office) Alpheus Hyatt, Darwin wrote on December 4, 1872: “After long reflection, I cannot avoid the conviction that no innate tendency to progressive development exists.” (Gould, 1989 p. 257)

Therefore, it is quite improper for the Darwinist to use terms like “weaker” to refer to those who die out, for that term implies progress, which Darwinism cannot do. However, Darwinists constantly slip into this error.

So we see that what is really going on is that predators must go after those animals that are less fit. But how do we know which animals are less fit?

Well, fitness is defined as those animals that survive to produce offspring. So the only way to tell if an animal is less fit is if it dies before it produces offspring.

Of course, we could use a different term. We could say that those that die are “less adapted” to their environment. And how do we determine which organism is most adapted?

Adaptation is a completely a posteriori phenomenon for a Darwinian, that is, it is based on the inductive assessment of facts. In every generation, all individuals that survive the process of elimination are de facto “adapted” and so are their properties that enabled them to survive. Elimination does not have the “purpose” or the “teleological goal” of producing adaptation; rather, adaptation is a by-product of the process of elimination (Mayr 2001, p. 150).

This, however, leads to an immediate problem, one that Gould recognized even if Mayr didn’t:

Arguments that propose adaptive superiority as the basis for survival risk the classic error of circular reasoning. Survival is the phenomenon to be explained, not the proof, ipso facto, that those who survived were “better adapted” than those who died. This issue has been kicking around the courtyards of Darwinian theory for more than a century. It even has a name–the “tautology argument” (Gould, 1989 p. 236)

Note that Gould was a Darwinist and yet he made the same claims that I have made. If survival is the proof of adaptation, then we are left with a tautology. Gould then informs us of how we can avoid this problem:

In fact, the supposed problem has an easy resolution, one that Darwin himself recognized and presented. Fitness–in this context, superior adaptation–cannot be defined after the fact by survival, but must be predictable before the challenge by an analysis of form, physiology, or behavior. (Gould, 1989 p. 236).

Note first that we have to redefine the term “fitness” to no longer mean “The average number of offspring produced by individuals with a certain genotype, relative to the number produced by individuals with other genotypes.” No, now we define it as “superior adaptation” which is a rather convenient way to resolve a problem—define it away! But note even if we grant this, Natural Selection must therefore become “predictable.” That is, we must be able to predict beforehand “by an analysis of form, physiology, or behavior” which organisms would survive.

I must ask: how does what Gould write differ from what I wrote in my original post?

In any case, Gould immediately admits:

But if we face the Burgess fauna honestly, we must admit that we have no evidence whatsoever–not a shred–that losers in the great decimation were systematically inferior in adaptive design to those who survived. Anyone can invent a plausible story after the fact. For example, Anomalocaris, though the largest of Cambrian predators, did not come up a winner. So I could argue that its unique nutcracker jaw, incapable of closing entirely, and probably working by constriction rather than tearing apart of prey, really wasn’t as adaptive as a more conventional jaw made of two pieces clamping together. Perhaps. But I must honestly face the counterfactual situation. Suppose that Anomalocaris had lived and flourished. Would I not then have been tempted to say, without any additional evidence, that Anomalocaris had survived because its unique jaw worked so well? If so, then I have no reason to identify Anomalocaris as destined for failure. I only know that this creature died–and so, eventually, do we all. (Gould, 1989 p. 236-237).

So even granting everything in the redefinition, the Darwinist is not helped out at all.

Once more we see that Darwinists play shell games with the term “Natural Selection.” It means one thing in one context, but it evolves to mean something else when they need it to mean something else. There is no precision in the term Natural Selection (because a precise term neuters it—a precise definition of Natural Selection is agreeable to the Creationist, after all!).

Now that we have seen this, the rest of Anonymous’s comment falls in short order. But to be complete, let us go through it now:

For example, under certain conditions, it may be advantageous for a given species to become larger.

This is a tacit admission that we are concerned with fitness, not whether an organism is “stronger” or “weaker.” After all, what is advantageous in one environment is not in another. Yet if this is the case, then Natural Selection must remain a tautology: those organisms that survive are those that survive. There is nothing of substance to Natural Selection after this admission by our anonymous commenter.

The fact that natural selection favors one evolution trend under certain conditions, and another (perhaps opposite one) under other conditions, hardly makes it irrelevant.

The use of the term “favors” in the above is smuggling teleology in through the back door. There is no consciousness in Natural Selection. It cannot favor anything. Instead, we only have “certain animals survive in certain environments, and we call this Natural Selection.” Very illuminating…

To go back to the moth example, maybe it’s true that natural selection will lead to the extinction of the slow white ones, given the evolutionary pressure they are facing (see the dodo for a real life example). But let’s not forget that it’s also natural selection that caused them to be slow and white in the first place.

Again, only objects that exist can “cause” anything. Natural Selection is not an object. It does not have any existence. It doesn’t cause anything. Saying Natural Selection “caused them to be slow…” is to once again attempt to smuggle teleology in through the backdoor. Everyone knows that teleology is there, but to admit it is to deny Darwinism. That is why we have to smuggle this stolen concept in.

As for the relative stability of species, I would venture that fitness to a particular environment is always a matter of optimization under (many) constraints, and the capacity to adapt is one of critical components of success. Many species have become too “perfect” for their own good, and ended up extinct.

Except the reason I brought up the stability of species was to demonstrate that even granting Darwinist views of Natural Selection as an actual entity that works in nature, it doesn’t mean Darwinism is true. Darwinism has far greater hurdles to mount, and Darwinists use the trivial portions of their theory as the capital for assuming the rest.

Indeed, allow me to propose an analogy of how Darwinism works. Suppose that Chuck Darwin, Charles’s great-great-great-great-great grandson, read a book by Tommy Malthus entitled “An Essay on the Principal of Physical Motion.” In Tommy’s essay, he provides overwhelming evidence that Newton’s Laws of Motion are correct, specifically noting that for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. Tommy proposes that this means when you step on the accelerator of your car, the tires of your car are actually pushing the Earth backwards.

Chuck examines his vehicle and sees that it is so. Then he realizes something else and makes a connection no one else has done yet. The Earth is rotating, see. But why is it rotating?

Well, if every force has an equal and opposite reaction, then it is most certainly possible that if you had enough cars accelerating over enough time in the same direction, a stationary Earth would eventually begin to spin.

Chuck pens a book entitled: “On The Origin of Earth’s Rotation by Means of Vehicular Acceleration.” In this book, he proposes that over the last several billion years, there have been cars that always go in the same direction which provide just enough kick to get the Earth moving at the rate it is currently spinning.

Naturally, there are skeptics. Chuck is not dissuaded. “Park a car on gravel and accelerate. You will see the gravel spray out behind the vehicle.” And indeed it is so. Of course, we cannot test the entire Earth for this…but that is a simple extrapolation from the available test. Soon, Chuck’s theory is accepted by every scientist. After all, if all the elements were just right, the theory would actually accomplish what it says. And we have scientific proof in the form of watching cars accelerate right now that is consistent with Chuck’s theory. And to top it all off, the theory is based on Newton’s laws which only the Einsteinian fundamentalists have any problems with!

And so in the space of just a few generations, Chuckians use “evidence” that is trivial to prove a theory that is absurd. So goes the course of science…

UPDATE: BTW, one other thing I noticed as I just re-read this is the following. As I mentioned in the body of the post, Gould redefines fitness to mean “superior adaptation” so he can pretend Natural Selection is predictive. Yet how do we know if an adaptation is “superior”?

Only if the organism survives. This redefinition actually only moves everything back one step, brushes some dirt over the path, and pretends to say something new.

A few years ago, I went to The Denver Museum of Nature and Science with my cousin, although truth in advertising ought to render the name The Denver Temple for Naturalistic Humanism. In the evolution corner of this temple, they had a computer running a game that was designed to teach Natural Selection. The game was simple: you start with about a dozen moths. Some of the moths were slow, some were fast. Some were dark and some were bright. These moths fluttered around the screen and the person who played the game got to be the predator “eating” moths.

Most people caught the slow bright moths. After about half the population was “eaten”, the remaining population randomly bred and the characters were passed on based on Mendel’s genetic theories. Then a new generation came forth and you got to eat more moths.

After a time, the slow bright moths went extinct and you’d be left with a bunch of fast dark moths. This would prove Natural Selection.

Except that my cousin and I knew that this was what the game wanted, so we purposely killed the fast dark moths. By the end of the game, we were left with a bunch of slow bright moths. But have no fear. Our version of events proved Natural Selection too.

How’s that? Because we, as predators, selected against the fast dark moths just as much as the average predator selected against slow bright moths.

There is a problem with this kind of “proof” for a theory. A theory that “proves” everything really proves nothing. It becomes an irrelevant factor.

For a simple example of this, consider the equation: x + n = y + n. In this case, we have a “like term” in both sides of the equation. As anyone familiar with algebra knows, we can cancel like terms out because they are irrelevant to the rest of the equation. If the left side has a “+ n” and the right side has a “+ n”, the “+ n” gives us no meaningful information for determining the answer to the problem. If we subtract “+ n” from both sides, we get the simple x = y.

Now suppose that “x + n = y + n” represents a theory that I was going to argue was valid. If my argument consisted of proving beyond a shadow of a doubt that “+ n” was true, does my argument provide any meaningful substance? Obviously not. The “+ n” factor is trivial. It can be true (or false for that matter) and it has no impact on the rest of the theory, because in the end “+ n” cancels itself out.

The reason I bring this up is to make what is a rather obvious, yet easily missed, point. Darwinists are quick to point to Natural Selection as their explanation for what drives Darwinism. However, the way they use Natural Selection renders the term trivial. We return to my original example of the moth program. It is true that selection occurs when the average person kills off the slow bright moths. But it is likewise true that selection occurs when I kill off the fast dark moths. In both sides of this equation, selection occurs. But the fact of selection is irrelevant to which species lives and which dies in that computer program. It does not matter if a choice is made; it matters what the determining factors of that selection are.

This game was supposed to analogize natural functions by using human selection as a pattern of natural selection (no one can fault the programmers as Darwin used the same analogy). But the issue of selection is not relevant, for if it were then it would be impossible for me to go against the outcome. That is, if Natural Selection were not trivial, we would be able to say “The slow bright moths will go extinct” and no matter what they would go extinct. But because I can choose to kill off the fast dark moths, this result is not guaranteed. To then say, “That’s Natural Selection too” is to stretch the term to the point of breaking.

If we use Gould’s concept of “rerunning life’s tape” a second time, we see that Natural Selection is trivial in nature too. If Natural Selection is a viable theory, we must be able to predict beforehand which populations will survive any specific event, and which will not. It is not enough to slap the label “Natural Selection” after the fact. To be a meaningful experiment, we must be able to predict. (This is basic science and should not be controversial.)

But we cannot predict which species will survive and which will not. Even in theory, we cannot determine which fossils would survive and which would not given a “do over” at a cataclysmic event. To say, “No matter what result occurs, that process is called Natural Selection” is to relegate Natural Selection to a completely irrelevant term. This doesn’t necessarily make Natural Selection false, it just makes it trivial.

Put it this way. Darwinists use Natural Selection as an explanatory theory. That is, the reason that one organism lives and another dies is because of Natural Selection. But in the above we have seen that if this were true, we could use Natural Selection to predict which would live and which would not. But that is not even possible in principal. Therefore, Natural Selection cannot be explanatory for it is claimed true regardless of which organism lives and which organism dies. If it is not explanatory, it can only be definitional (that is: “The process by which an organism lives while another organism dies out is known as Natural Selection”). But definitions are tautologies, not explanations.

In the end, Natural Selection cannot be an explanation for why any organism survives. It becomes the “+ n” in the equation, for it is tautologically true regardless of anything else. Natural Selection therefore may be true, but it will remain trivial. Indeed, under this process Natural Selection is true in Creationism and Intelligent Design as well as Darwinism. Since Natural Selection is not explanatory under this system and instead is a definition that those organisms that survive are those that survive, it remains trivial.

Perhaps the greatest evidence of this lies in the fact that while a Darwinist may often claim, “Darwinism is just as proven as Einstein’s theory of Relativity” you will never hear a physicist say, “Einstein’s theory of Relativity is just as proven as Darwinism.” The reason? A physicist can say, “If Einstein is true, light will bend when it passes through a gravity field; and it will not bend if it is false.” There is only one possible outcome, and we can see that light does indeed bend in gravity. On the other hand, the Darwinist says, “If organism X lives, it is Natural Selection; but if it dies it is Natural Selection too.”

There is a world of difference between the two.

One of the most commonly used evidences for Darwinism is the fact of morphological similarities between various organisms. To put it simply, many organisms look like each other. These similarities extend not just through the physical phenotype, but also into the genotype as well. Indeed, much hay is made over the fact that chimp DNA is 98% similar to human DNA (although that figure has been questioned recently).

Rather than looking at some specific examples, I want to first look at the concept as a whole. Is it true that morphological similarities imply common descent from an original species?

It is certainly true that similarities can indicate descent. We see examples of this in the genome all the time, especially with recessive and dominant genes that obviously follow a hereditary tree. But we have equal evidence of similarities that do not follow heredity, that do not imply common descent.

One obvious example of this is found if you look in the parking lot at your local mall. You will see various “organisms” of vehicles out there: Ford, Chevy, Nissan, Mazda, etc. All of these vehicles have similar structure, are made from similar materials, and are used in similar manners. Yet we know that the Chevy did not evolve from Ford except insofar as the design was copied by an intelligent agent. As a result of this simple concept, we see that morphological similarities need not imply common descent; they can also imply design.

And we do not need to restrict ourselves to non-biological aspects to see this. Ernst Mayr, for instance, argued that eyes evolved independently over 40 times in the fossil record. That is, eyes formed in various species in the fossil record after the theorized branching point between the two species had already occurred, which is to say that both daughter species came from a common ancestor that was blind, yet both developed eyes anyway. Further evidence is found in the concept of Convergent Evolution, which states (for example) that all birds have the same basic wing shape because it is necessary for flight, not because they all share a common ancestor. In other words, convergent evolution of the wing shape, of eyes, and of myriad other aspects are already acknowledged by Darwinists to not be evidence of common descent, but instead of common use.

Because morphological similarities need not be evidence of common descent (as evidenced by the convergent evolution theory) and they can be evidence of common design (as seen in a myriad number of intelligently designed machines that look alike in order to perform a specific similar function), morphological similarities do not imply common descent. At most, all a Darwinist can say is that morphological similarities are consistent with Darwinism; but the intelligent design advocate can make the same claim about I.D. As such, this often offered argument for Darwinism proves nothing.

The YouTube Killer. (By the way, is anyone else tired of newspaper articles that use the phrase “not uncommon” as if that were profound instead of just improper English?)

Anyway, in Pekka-Eric Auvinen’s own words, the reason he went into a school in Finland and killed 8 people (and then himself) is because:

I, as a natural selector, will eliminate all who I see unfit, disgraces of human race and failures of natural selection.

Yup. All those Christian values corrupted this guy for sure. After all, it is Christian teaching that says the “human race is not worth fighting for or saving… only worth killing” and that “the truth is that I am just an animl [sic]“.

He does tell us not to blame others for his actions, so at least we know he wasn’t a Liberal. If only he had rid himself of his Biblical worldview! “No mercy for the scum of the earth! HUMANITY IS OVERRATED! It’s time to put NATURAL SELECTION & SURVIVAL OF THE FITTEST back on tracks!”

Ironically, he does end his diatribe with the statement “Justice renders to everyone his due.” Which I’m sure he is finding out at this very moment…

As I walked a beagle to lunch today, I had an epiphany. It begins with the fact that it is Fall, and as a result trees are everywhere shedding their leaves. These leaves quite often fall on the sidewalk.

Now let me ask you a question. As you are walking down a clean, empty sidewalk and you happen to notice a single leaf fall onto the sidewalk ahead of you, do you:

A) Examine the leaf in wonder as you walk past it?
B) Ignore the leaf completely?

Or

C) Curse the weather & seasons for conspiring to litter?

The answer is, of course, none of the above. Because what you do (at least if you’re male) is you step on the leaf! Don’t try to deny this guys, you know it’s true. If a leaf falls on the sidewalk five feet in front of you, without even thinking about it, you manage to shift your stride ever so slightly so that your foot will come down exactly on the leaf and you’ll hear that satisfying CRUNCH. (By the way, surveys have demonstrated this: a full 93% of men admit to going out of their way to crunch leaves. Interestingly enough, the study also found that 7% of men lie about whether they go out of their way to step on leaves.)

Anyway, I happened to notice today en route to lunch that there was a section of sidewalk that was about 2/3s empty, but 1/3 covered by leaves. This is due to the wind that had blown the leaves into a leaf-drift on the left-hand side of the sidewalk. So, 1/3 of the sidewalk was covered with leaves and 2/3s was clear.

Naturally, the vast majority of people were walking on the 1/3 side covered in leaves, and only stepped out of the leaves in order to pass others. Statistically, this validates my point that people enjoy crunching leaves.

At first, I didn’t make the connection, but now that I’ve had some time to think about it I realize that this actually proves Darwinism correct. You see, I live in Colorado Springs, and I’ve seen pictures of the Springs back in the 1870s when it was founded. There are no trees anywhere. It’s prairie all over the place. Even pictures going up into the mountains (Ute Pass) show no trees on the hills.

Now, there are trees everywhere. Why are the trees here now? Because they were planted. But people could have planted any number of different kinds of trees. We have blue spruce, pine, and other trees littering the mountainsides all over Colorado. So why is it that the vast majority of trees that were planted in the city are deciduous trees?

Because people like to crunch leaves in the Fall. It’s that simple. Nature has selected for deciduous trees so that humans (at least male humans) are able to crunch leaves during Fall. This gives pleasure to the humans, and ensures that they will plant new deciduous trees when old ones die. The result of this symbiotic relationship causes selection pressures to choose for deciduous trees. The result is that in just over 100 years since the founding of Colorado Springs, we have gone from prairie having no trees to twelve billion leaves in my backyard that I have to clear out.

Need we any more proof that Darwinism is true than this simple observation?

UPDATE: After I concluded the above, I decided to test my theories a little (this is the proper sequence when doing true science, BTW). I asked a couple of guys at work my survey question. The question was simply “If you see a leaf on the sidewalk, do you A) look at it as you walk by, B) ignore it completely, or C) curse the weather for littering?” The first guy I asked said, “I have a fourth option: I step on it.” The second guy said, “Is it a dry leaf? If so, I step on it.”

2 for 2. I’m tellin’ ya, it’s scientifically proven now.

I read through The dangers of creationism in education, also known as Doc. 11375 (17-SEP-2007) from the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (HT: James White). There are many flaws in this document, which makes it difficult for me to know where to begin.

First: some general impressions. This document was extremely frustrating for me to read. I am currently at work on a project examining Darwinism myself. My philosophy is simple: if Darwinism is false, there is no need for me to refute the weakest arguments of Darwinism. I can fully handle the strongest claims Darwinists make. As a result, my goal has been to familiarize myself as much as possible with the current ideas of Darwinian evolution. In fact, my desire would be that any die-hard Darwinist would be able to take the first half of my project (the part that defines Darwinism) and say, “Yes, this is what modern Darwinism teaches.” The goal would be for Richard Dawkins himself to be able to admit everything in the first part is accurately portrayed. Only then would I critique Darwinism.

As a result, I hold myself to the standard of actually reading and interacting with the best arguments that the opposing side has to offer in the debate over Creationism and Darwinism. The Council of Europe, on the other hand, doesn’t even try to interact with the worst arguments ever brought forth by Creationists. Instead, we are treated to outlandish claims that Creationism will lead toward human rights abuses, and similar propaganda. And make no mistake, that is all that this document is: propaganda for religious naturalism.

Because of this, I actually have some reservations about responding to this document. It’s not the best argument for Darwinism, and as a result any effort that I would spend refuting some of the nonsense put forth could be countered by Darwinists who say, “You’ve got a point with this document, but you really need to look at what Mayr said about this issue instead…” etc. As a result, I will leave the critique of evolution itself alone (unless anyone who reads it and responds in the comments has anything specific they’d like for me to address), and instead focus on the misrepresentation of science and Creationism found in this document.

The first claim of the document is found in the summary:

Creationism in any of its forms, such as “intelligent design”, is not based on facts, does not use any scientific reasoning and its contents are definitely inappropriate for science classes.

Creationism “is not based on facts” seems particularly ironic since later on in this document (paragraph 84), the writers complain:

By only presenting facts without any theory or proof, Harun Yahya abuses the credulity of individuals who listen to him or read his works.

So the Creationism that begins with being “not based on facts” suddenly becomes only “facts without any theory or proof” later on. When the goalposts are shifting this much, it’s obvious the document is biased.

But the first quote also says that Creationism “does not use any scientific reasoning” and lumps in intelligent design (ID) with this claim. This is so absurd it can only be outright dishonesty or sheer stupidity. To take just one example, Darwin’s Black Box by Michael Behe is filled with lots of scientific facts, theories, and proofs. Even if one were to disagree with Behe’s conclusions, one has to admit that he is a scientist and is looking at biochemistry, a scientific discipline. Further, the concept of design itself is scientific: this is why we have forensic science, after all. If you find a dead body, the first thing you have to establish was whether the death was natural or by design. With forensics, we can also determine to a great extent who the designer was. The science of design is scientific; and there are many Creationists who are scientists. To say Creationism “does not use any scientific reasoning” is simply flat out false.

The next problem we see is that this document seems to think that Creationism came about as a response to Darwinism, for they write in paragraph 2 of the Draft resolution:

Creationism, born of the denial of the evolution of species through natural selection, was for a long time an almost exclusively American phenomenon (emphasis added).

And in paragraphs 2 and 8 of the Report of Mr Guy Lengagne (revised) we read:

As creationism is first of all a reaction to the theory of evolution, it appeared important to describe this theory.

…

Creationism thus came about in opposition to Darwin’s theory of evolution.

One cannot help but laugh at such absurd reasoning. One is tempted to conclude the Council of Europe thinks that Genesis was written in 1860 because someone had to counter the devastating claims of Darwin. In fact, this is a complete misuse of the term “Creationism.” What Lengagne means by “Creationism” is simply “anti-evolutionism.” This is seen in his paragraph 6, when speaking of Darwin, he writes:

His works mark the end of the agreement between natural history and the Christian tradition, as well as the birth of anti-evolutionist movements (emphasis in original).

What is meant by “Creationism” has nothing to do with what “Creationism” actually means. If you ask the average person if he is a Creationist, he will answer the question by understanding “Creationism” to mean simply that at some point the universe was created by someone. This, however, is hardly the same thing as asking, “Are you anti-evolution?” since you can be a creationist who believes in evolution too (Behe once again serves as an example of this). The ambiguity of the term here is most unfortunate (it’s also present in the term evolution, but that can be delved into in a separate post).

With this as the “foundation” for what Creationism is, we read the following definition in paragraph 30:

The most intransigent of the supporters of creationism claim that the world was created by God in six days and maintain that the transformist or evolutionist theories that conflict with the Bible, according to which God created each plant or animal species individually, can only be lies. They say that science is wrong because, in the strictest possible sense, the Bible says something else – which reminds us, incidentally, of the trial of a man called Galileo.

First, you gotta love the poisoning of the well with the Galileo comment. But even that aside, it’s completely inaccurate to claim that the Bible teaches “God created each plant or animal species individually (emphasis added)” as the Bible does not speak of species. In fact, the term “species” is such a meaningless term even in biology that it’s worthless to bring it up here. (Any Darwinists who would disagree would be hard pressed to actually present the definition of “species.”) The Bible merely speaks of various “kinds” that have been created; it’s the Naturalist who anachronistically reads into that term the concept of “species” that causes the problem here.

Finally, let us look at how this document defines science and knowledge, and this is where the document damns itself beyond all hope of recovery. We hear that there are three pillars to science (paragraph 24):

As Guillaume Lecointre, a professor of zoology at the National Natural History Museum in Paris, points out, science is the totality of operations that produce objective knowledge. A statement on the world can only be described as objective if it has been verified by an independent observer. This verification depends on three factors: scepticism, rationality and logic and, finally, methodological materialism. These three pillars ensure the objectivity of a scientific result.

The problem with this is that they consulted a professor of zoology to answer a philosophy of science question. Here we have the first claim: “Science is the totality of operations that produce objective knowledge (emphasis added).” If that is true, it is impossible to objectively know this statement. Further, “A statement on the world can only be described as objective if it has been verified by an independent observer.” This falls instant prey to the brain-in-a-vat argument. After all, all knowledge that we have is subjective knowledge. We do not know what anyone else knows. We can hear what we think they say, but we have no objective way of knowing whether they really exist or whether we imagined them, let alone a way of knowing whether they are lying to us if they really do exist. Further, even if they do exist and aren’t lying there’s still no way we can claim they are “independent” observers. Each observer has his own presuppositional baggage that he brings to the plate. There is no such thing as a neutral, independent observer of anything.

Finally, we see that the three pillars are “scepticism” (which is obviously not applied to this definition of science), “rationality and logic” (which also refute this definition, because either it is a contradiction that science is the “totality of operations” that can produce objective knowledge since this statement is supposedly objectively true, or this statement is circularly reasoned) and “methodological materialism” (which likewise fails the logic test by engaging in circular reasoning: assuming materialism to prove there is only materialism; and is itself an immaterial concept that is being held as truth, hence a contradiction).

But this is all lost on the author, for we read in paragraph 46:

However, let us repeat: it is not possible to establish knowledge without scientific evidence and without verifying its objectivity and scientific character by the reproduction of experiments and/or observations.

One must simply ask: What scientific evidence do we have for this claim? How can we verify that this is the way to determine objectivity? What experiments can we reproduce to prove that reproducing experiments is what will give us knowledge?

It is blatantly obvious that no philosopher was interviewed during the course of the Council’s work. The Council, in essence, is claiming that knowledge can only be established by means which are impotent to establish knowledge. Thus, there is no scientific knowledge under these rules…yet the Council pretends that there are!

So we see that this document mis-defines Creationism and science both; it is based on presuppositions that are self-refuting; it doesn’t bother to actually address specific arguments against evolution (and it really doesn’t put forth any for evolution either); and it commits basic Philosophy 101 errors. On the whole, a very pathetic piece of propaganda.

By the way, after I posted last night, as I was getting ready to go to sleep, I thought of a possible objection to the math I used in my previous post regarding how fast the Grand Canyon is growing. Simply put, my figures only looked at one aspect: the depth of the canyon. However, the Grand Canyon is a three dimensional object (although is it really proper to call the absense of something–rock–an object?). Anyway, that meant today I redid my figures based on these statistics. There we are told that the Grand Canyon has a volume of 4.17 trillion cubic meters, which averages out to 695,000 cubic meters of erosion per year:

4.17 trillion cubic meters = 4,170,000,000,000 cubic meters

4,170,000,000,000 cubic meters / 6,000,000 years = 695,000 cubic meters/year

This incorporates both the river’s depth and the width of the canyon as a whole averaged out over the course of the 6 million years that it is claimed the Grand Canyon took to “create.” I’ll look at this number a bit more later.

But I do have to confess that I’m not sure how they arrived at the figure of 4.17 trillion cubic meters of volume for the Grand Canyon. After all, we are told that the canyon is:

433 km long (river length)
16 km average width (with 28.81 km max width)
1.6 km average depth

Now, running those figures for volume (i.e. length x width x depth) yeilds 4,330 cubic km (using the average number for the width)–which is 4,330,000 cubic m. That’s 4.33 million, not 4.17 trillion cubic meters. Even if we use the max width, we only get 7,800 cubic km, which is 7.8 million cubic meters.

My next thought was that maybe it had something to do with the river length that they were measuring. Since rivers meander, however, it seems that using the river length would actually make the volume larger than using a straight line measurement. (To visualize this, if you have a 1 foot long/wide square, you can wrap a 3 foot long jump rope inside it easily. The area of the square is one square foot, yet the rope is three feet long. Thus, if we incorporate the river miles into the cube we’re looking at, we can actually get a vastly inflated volume. Only if the river was perfectly straight would we get the correct length for the cube we’re looking at.

In any case, I could see how simplifying this to a cube would be nowhere near accurate as a cube isn’t a canyon; however, measuring the canyon in the simpler cubic form should give results too large rather than too small, as the canyon should fit inside the cube. So, again, I’m not sure where the National Park Service got their numbers for 4.17 trillion cubic meters of volume in the Grand Canyon. In fact, if we stipulate that the length and width are correct, in order to get 4.17 trillion cubic meters of volume, the canyon would need to be:

4.17 trillion cubic meters = 4,170,000,000,000 m = 4,170,000,000 km

X km x 433 km x 28.81 km = 4,170,000,000 km^3 =
X km = (4,170,000,000 km^3)/(433 km)(28.81 km) = 334,275 km

334,275 km is about 209,000 miles. Clearly, something is weird with these figures. Unfortunately, the National Park Service does not provide enough information about their method of measurement for me to be able to do anything else with this. About the only thing I can figure is that it might have something to do with the elevation differences between the head of the canyon and the end of the canyon. Still, that would have to be pretty impressive to account for the difference between 4.17 trillion cubic meters and 7.8 million cubic meters: a difference so minute that you’re still left trying to account for 4.17 trillion cubic meters when you take rounding into consideration:

4,170,000,000,000 - 7,800,000 = 4,169,992,200,000…rounds to 4.17 trillion.