What Professor Armand Marie Leroi Doesn't Know

Where, when, how or why any mutation in any genome led to an increase in information in the
genome so as to lead, in turn, to natural selection.

You can see Richard Dawkins being challenged with this on youtube in a 'trick question' from a
naughty sneaky creationist; Dawkins flickers his eyelids for ages, looks paralysed and then asks to
have the camera stopped. There is a clip somewhere of him complaining about this trick interview
methodology. In the clip where he looks or is supposedly made to look flummoxed, he explains
how there is a misconception that the fish and other animals we see now are our ancestors and that
this is a misunderstanding of evolution because all these creatures are as modern as we are; we are
not descended from them but from their remote ancestors.

I think what he means by this, without wanting to say it, is that we cannot possibly observe
evolution in action 'now' (unless, say, something lightweight like black moths from the industrial
revolution or something similar right now) and that it is therefore ridiculous to ask for current
evidence of it in action – a very long time ago. Rather, we can only look at the ancient fossils as
relics of what was in action back then. But to Dawkins the creationist idea that this constitutes an
absence of any observable evidence of evolution is to him a non-concept, so foreign to him that that
is why he became all paralysed and twitchy and speechless. That, however, is to him just a matter of
science rather than evidence for the absence of any evidence for evolution.

It's a bit like two people arguing with each other over who is being the most argumentative or is
raising their voice: it's not me, it's you. A very British obsession. The French, for example, shout as
a matter of course. Unless they're the mild-mannered variety of frog like Professor Leroi, who will
only start to look vaguely irritated at the mention of 'creationism', as he did on Channel 4* at the
close of the 2009 Darwin-season bicentenary of Darwin's whatever it was. Birth? So we'll be getting
the same old hoo-ha in 2059 presumably with a punctuated equilibrium in between.

Incidentally, if it can be called incidental, there is a common misconception of 'creationism' or

misrepresentation of it in that creationist scientists (yes, they are able to conduct research) are
falsely said to deny that there are many more species now than in the past. They do not teach that all
the creatures that exist now have always existed. But for more, use the worldwide web.

I particularly like the fact that Prof John Bryant, Prof Emeritus of Molecular & Cell Biology at
Exeter university and former Chair of Christians in Science, raving Darwinists you should
understand, 'evolutionary creationists', meaning they agree totally with Dawkins except for the bit
about the God Delusion, intellectually admires Bob Dylan. But Bob Dylan is waiting for the Levee
to Break imminently, some 6000 years on from creation.

Now I'm too bored to waste any more time on you. I'm going to have my tea. When I was growing
up in the Seventies in Australia I could never get any evidence for evolution of the tv programmes
that assumed it. I had to wait till I started reading creationist material to actually get some evidence
for evolution. All the stuff you see on tv like Attenborough just assumes it, at least until the
bicentenary when you got more 'detail'. I bought Ernst Mayr's What Evolution is a few years ago.
So what is the evidence? Loads and irrefutable and only an idiot would deny it. OK. So I go to the
chapter on the diversion of man and apes from a common ancestor, sloppy referred to by Mayr as
'apes'. What is it? Unfortunately no fossil remains of the branching event at the three-million-year
mark ...

*I think he said to Jon Snow something along the lines of, 'Yes, Jon, the forces of darkness will
always be with us'. Bold is definitely verbatim. Prof Leroi is welcome to make a correction.