But they won't like it. Not one bit. In a recent blog post, the Institute for Creation Research (I wonder what it is they research: they already have all their answers in their book based on the tales of bronze-age goat-herders) takes issue with a sentence at the very end of a Fortune article:Basically, the Fortune author is talking about selection: the consumer selects the models which will survive and refuses to buy other models, which will become extinct. Clearly, the analogy is perfectly valid as this sort of selection is one of the many mechanisms driving biological evolution. All analogies fail at some point, but this one goes pretty far. The ICR, however, takes issue with something the author doesn't even mention. They write Indeed, the process by which new car models are invented and built is proabably not really all that similar to the way mutations or recombinations occur in biological organisms. One may argue that the buffering of mutations by chaperones (such as HSP90) is sort of similar to the design of cars that are kept secret until the time is right for them to actually see the light of day, but I'd consider that a stretch of the analogy and pretty far-fetched.

Hoping they don't bite off the whole hand, one could give the ICR a little pinky and grant them that - while the Fortune author never even addresses this part of the issue - human inventions are nothing like mutations, recombnations or any of the other mechanisms by which biology innovates. Indeed, there is research that shows just that. Niles Eldrige is a paleontologist who plays the cornet. Indeed, he collects cornets. He knows the age and maker of now over 500 cornets in his database, going back to 1825. He combined hobby with work and compared the phylogeny of cornets with that of biological organisms (see also NYT article). He finds that intelligently designed phylogenies look nothing like evolved phylogenies.

Thus, it is exactly the point where the ICR is correct that proves their mission wrong: Precisely for the same reason that they are correct in pointing out that car invention is nothing like mutation, they are wrong in assuming an engineer behind evolution. Biological phylogenies would look nothing like the ones we find, but more like the ones of cars and cornets.

HT: Krista Todd. Thanks Neil Saunders