Reply #28: I get the impression that few people really understand... [View All]

What the neo-Darwinist theory proposes about evolution. Just that it must be better than creationism and the God goes *poof* idea. Well, when you put it that way. But it's more complex than that, and it would be tragic if religion replaced science in this instance because the argument is oversimplified due to the clash of two authoritarian institutions -- science and religion, neither of which like to admit to error.

What should happen is that the criticisms of neo-Darwinism that have come out mostly in the next decade be taken more seriously, to update the theory of evolution. But since the scientific establishment is too stubborn to give any ground at all, it looks like the idea is in danger of being completely thrown over for creationism with some Intelligent Design as window dressing.

There are real problems with the neo-Darwin theory of evolution as it is now conceived, and I'm posting four short passages from books including a proponent of intelligent design, a critic of neo-Darwinism, and one by the most popular neo-Darwinist -- Richard Dawkins. How easy is it to tell which is which? The titles of the four books (not in order) should give you some hints:

How Blind is the Watchmaker? Nature's Design and the Limits of Naturalistic Science by Neil Broom

Darwin's God: Evolution and the Problem of Evil

The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins

Not By Chance!: Shattering the Modern Theory of Evolution by Dr. Lee M. Spetner

************ONE

There are several different kinds of variations of the phenotype that can be induced by the environment, and many of them can lead to long-term changes in a population. These variations can be divided into two broad classes. In the first class are variations in the phenotype that result from changes in the DNA sequence. In the second class are variations in the phenotype without a change in the DNA sequence.

Nonrandom mutations fall into the first class. Mutations, as we have seen in Chapter 2, are changes in the DNA sequence, and can be divided into several types. Some are changes in a single nucleotide, and some are more complex. Many mutations are known to be spontaneous and their effects are independent of any environmental influence. These are not the mutations of macroevolution. Evidence indicates that these mutations are the results of errors in the proper working of the genetic mechanism. Most of them result from errors in the replication of the DNA.

The mutations I am calling for are those that show evidence of being nonrandom in that they are triggered by the environment. Some of them have been seen to be adaptive. These mutations form the first class of nonrandom variation that could lead to observed evolution. These mutations may act as switches triggered by the environment that switch the genome to one of a preexisting set of potential states to produce an adaptive phenotype.

We have seen that random mutations do not put information into the genome. The mutations that contribute to macroevolution are nonrandom -- they are triggered by the environment and lead to adaptive phenotypes. The potential for adaptivity to the environment already exists in the genome. The environment just triggers it.

**********TWO

What about the life-span of a smaller genetic unit, say 1/100 of the length of your chromosome 8a? This unit too came from your father, but it very probably was not originally assembled in him. Following the earlier reasoning, there is a 99 per cent chance that he received it intact from one of his two parents. Suppose it was from his mother, your paternal grandmother. Again, there is a 99 per cent chance that she inherited it intact from one of her parents. Eventually, if we trace the ancestry of a small genetic unit back far enough, we will come to its original creator. At some stage it must have been created for the first time inside a testicle or an ovary of one of your ancestors.

Let me repeat the rather special sense in which I am using the word 'create'. The smaller sub-units which make up the genetic unit we are considering may well have existed long before. Our genetic unit was created at a particular moment only in the sense that the particular *arrangement* of sub-units by which it is defined did not exist before that moment. The moment of creation may have occured quite recently, say in one of your grandparents. But if we consider a very small genetic unit, it may have been first assembled in a much more distant ancestor, perhaps an ape-like pre-human ancestor. Moreover, a small genetic unit inside you may go on just as far into the future, passing intact through a long line of your descendants.

**********THREE

Religion and science are to be kept separate. God is retained to supply the former, but it would never do to consider him in the latter...The Creator is used to explain morality but is disconnected from the physical world.

Darwin, for his part, was keen to the implications of this new Gnosticism. If God is not intimately involved in the world, then is he involved at all? In a letter Darwin challenged his American friend Asa Gray to think this through:

I see a bird which I want for food, take my gun and kill it. I do this designedly. An innocent and good man stands under a tree and is killed by a flash of lightning. Do you believe (and I really should like to hear) that God designedly killed this man?...If you believe so, do you believe that when a swallow snaps up a gnat that God designed that that particular swallow should snap up that particular gnat at that particular instant? I believe that the man and the gnat are in the same predicament. If the death of neither man nor gnat are designed, I see no good reason to believe that their *first* birth or production should be necessarily designed.

Darwin may have been more skeptic than believer, but he knew very well how to craft a religious argument. The Scriptures proclaimed that God is free to create calamity, yet that providence extends even to birds. But in the Victorian world, Darwin could question this with little justification required. It was reasonable for Darwin to argue that God would not be personally involved in the swallow's attack on the gnat -- not because of any finding of modern science but because of the persistence of Gnosticism into modern times. And given such a premise, it was then reasonable to conclude that God is altogether removed from the world. Evolution is the right conclusion, given a Gnostic starting point. God and matter don't mix, so life wasn't created.

************FOUR

Recall that DNA functions rather like a set of blueprints, or rather a series of algorithms, providing the correct recipe for making each of the many different proteins required to be manufactured by the cell at each moment in time and space. The exact coordination of this process is absolutely crucial to the correct functioning of the cell but is left largely unexplained by the DNA itself. A higher level of control is required, and the process goes something like this: At a given moment a particular protein enzyme is required by the cell. The cell reaches into the appropriate DNA "pigeon hole" (that specific part of the DNA library containing the coding instructions for the required protein), takes it out, makes a "photocopy," returns the original to its correct place and delivers the copied instructions to the cellular machinery, thus enabling protein production to commence. It is not the DNA that orchestrates this exquisitely synchronized set of events. Rather, it is the whole cell within the living organism that is somehow orchestrated to bring about the retrieval of the required protein recipe from the vast library of coded information stored in the DNA. And don't forget, this entire process is resoundingly goal-centered. The cell is intent on producing a particular protein for a particular task.

**********

Can anyone tell me which is which, and how they know?