Darwin and Dawkins Deficiencies

At the suggestion of an atheist friend of mine, I finally got around to reading a couple of classics on evolutionary theory:  The Origin of Species by Charles Darwin (1859), and The Greatest Show on Earth, the Evidence for Evolution by Richard Dawkins (2009).  A few years ago I expressed My Problem with Evolutionary Theory from a purely logical and scientific viewpoint.  This is an update of my thoughts on the subject after reading these famous scientists' volumes.

My views really haven't changed much and here is why:

I came away dissatisfied with the suggestions and proofs for evolution that these guys came up with.  Mind you, both works were very scientific and very detailed - almost to the point of monotony, and there was a purpose in their thoroughness;  they wanted the facts to be overwhelming.

The problem with the minutia for me is that I am a big picture sort of guy.  While reading these books I still had trouble with a few very fundamental ideas.

Something from Nothing

It is counterintuitive to think that starting from some accident of nature millions of years ago, life could first form as a single cell and through an impossible sequence of chance "upgrades" eventually produce the complex forms that exist today.  Actually, neither Darwin or Dawkins says much about these initial beginnings, since nobody has a good idea of how it actually happened, although there are a few theories.

Darwin describes Natural Selection or The Survival of the Fittest as the series of very small changes (mutations) that accumulate over a very long period of time to bring about the eventual morphing of one species into another species (it is a separate species when it can no longer breed with its predecessors).  These changes have what Darwin describes as a "tendency to improvement".  And improve they must, though nobody knows how.  He says, "Although we have no good evidence of the existence in organic beings of an innate tendency towards progressive development, yet this necessarily follows... through the continued action of natural selection." (p.210, The Origin of Species)

Did you catch that?  He says the tendency to improve has no proof, but it is essential to natural selection.  That is a very honest statement and very astute, and to me, it brings the entire proposition into question.

Darwin acknowledges that there is a creative force at work in every improvement of a life form.  He is absolutely right.  You can't get here (complexity) from there (simplicity) without creativity.  A creative force is at work in evolution.  Darwin acknowledges the Creator in the final paragraph of his work, "There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed by the Creator into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being evolved." (p.507, The Origin of Species)

In his book, Richard Dawkins assumes but does not acknowledge this creative force, and he never uses the word or any form of the word "create".

Dawkins spends a lot of time on genetics.  Of course, Darwin knew nothing of genes and chromosomes - since they hadn't been invented yet.  Heh.

The creative force that Dawkins assumes but never mentions is at work in the genes.  The changes that come about in any adapting and improving life form are taking place in the DNA.  Chromosomes, of course, are sub-microscopic menus for constructing individual organisms.  But they are incapable of planning.  As Dawkins says, "nature, of course, has no understanding or awareness of anything at all." (p.35 The Greatest Show on Earth) "Natural selection doesn't look into the future." (p.389)

Being the very practical guy that I am, this is a problem I can't get around scientifically.  Evolution, as meticulously described by Darwin and Dawkins, is obviously a creative process.  Yet, atheists, including Dawkins seem oblivious to this and rely on evolution to prove there is no creator.  Hmm.

I see this conflicting assumption of a creative force within the genes while denying the creator, as the elephant in the room of Dawkins and every other atheist.  For theists, of course, it is not a problem.  God is capable of creating in any number of ways, and evolution could be one of those ways - if it weren't so damn unscriptural according to Biblical literalists. (although there are contradictions in the literal reading of Genesis 1, the sun being created on Day Four of creation. What sort of days were the first three?)

DNA is Stupid

I addressed this problem in my analysis a couple of years ago, and these guys have not helped me to understand it any better.  How can evolution come up with complex systems like the sense of vision?  In his section on "Perfect Organs" Darwin hypothesized that perhaps the eye could have evolved from the simple light-sensing tissue that exists in some jellyfish.  Wow, that would require some massive improvements, wouldn't it?

The problem with this is that it requires planning and no small amount of follow-through spanning millions of years of evolutionary process, and as Dawkins conceded, nature is incapable of planning.

And this is still a big roadblock to my understanding of how sexual reproduction could have evolved. You cannot evolve if you cannot procreate.  But you cannot procreate unless all of the essential parts exist in a viable form.  One of the earliest ancestors of mankind and other higher life forms was apparently the slime mold which reproduces by the production of spores which can be asexual (the products of mitosis) or sexual (the products of meiosis).  At some point, as things progressed, there was a fundamental biological change-over to a much more complex sexual reproduction.  But that required a huge creative advancement in a moment of time, or else no subsequent offspring would be produced.  Could organisms continue to reproduce via spores while also evolving a penis, vagina, and everything else that goes with sexual reproduction?  Neither Darwin or Dawkins attempted a hypothesis on this. I guess if they thought of it, it was better not to bring it up.

Adaptation on Steroids

As I stand back and look at the big picture as presented by these famous scientists, it looks to me like they have taken the process of adaptation to a whole new level.  They have made it capable not only of crossing from one form of species to the next -  and back again, but also of devising entirely new systems and structures.  Incredible.

Darwin described in detail the structure of a certain orchid that is pollinated by a very specific bee.  The bee needs the nectar and climbs inside the orchid to gather it, but in so doing, it falls into a pool of water in the lower part of the flower.  Its wings now wet, the bee struggles to climb out - and finds to its delight - that there is an escape tunnel exactly shaped to fit its body.  Crawling out through the tunnel, its wings rub on the roof of the tunnel where it gathers pollen, then flies off to the next flower which it inadvertently pollenates as it climbs around inside.  Dawkins revisits this scenario, calling it a wondrous sort of co-evolution.

Really?  The orchid adapted to the bee and the bee adapted to the orchid, and they must have somehow kept each other mutually satisfied - that is, reproducing - while all of this adaptation was taking place.

Sorry, I don't think so.  I am too practical a thinker for that.  Give me some intelligent design so I can resolve these impossibilities in my mind.

Throughout their books these scientists cite innumerable instances of spectacular relationships that must have co-evolved.  They are detailed in their awed descriptions of advanced and miraculous instincts and behaviors and life forms that came to be the way they are through this painfully slow process of natural selection.  (Dawkins even called some of them "phantasmagoric" in his chapters on genetics. p. 250)  Apparently, "We are fearfully and wonderfully evolved." (Psalm 139:14... sort of)

In his chapter on the fossil record and the absence of missing links, Darwin suggests that the penguin may be a living example of a transitional species.  The flippers may have been leftover wings from when it was a bird.  Then later in the same book he suggests that maybe it was evolving in the other direction and would eventually leave the water and fly again.  

Again, I am stuck with the necessity of some sort of intelligent volition for this to take place - in either direction.  Genes have no brain and can't hold a thought long enough to initiate the most essential of changes that would make a bearing on the next generation, let alone hold that thought for the millions of years it would take to develop lighter bones, feathers, aerodynamic shape and so on, that would be needed for a used-to-be penguin to take to the skies.

Faith in Evolution

I am struck by the amount of speculation that exists in evolutionary theory.  Darwin and Dawkins are full of it.  But that doesn't seem to be a problem to them.  Darwin says, "It is impossible to conjecture by what serviceable gradations the one could have been converted into the other, but it by no means follows from this that such fractions have not existed."  Paraphrase:  "Just because we can't imagine how evolution takes place, doesn't mean it's not true."  Not very scientific-sounding is it?

Well maybe it is true.  But if so, it is nothing short of miraculous.  And it defies logic.

Evolutionary Creationism

I have never been more the skeptic of natural selection than after reading Darwin's and Dawkins' books.  But just because I have serious doubts doesn't mean that my questions will never be answered.  It is early in the game.  Scientists are collecting more data every day.  I am really interested in what DNA mapping might disclose about the connections of all  species in the future.

I believe in adaptation, and at this point, I am not ready to categorically reject evolutionary theory, but for now, I cannot embrace the evolutionary scenario that Darwin presents as theory and Dawkins presents as fact.  Not without some creative force at work in the middle of it to give those essential boosts that each species needs to get from one level to the next.

I don't know if that makes me an Evolutionary Creationist, an Agnostic Evolutionist (agnostics have a "wait and see" attitude), or simply a Creationist with an open mind. 

And really, it doesn't matter that much to me.  God is no less God if he created by means of evolution.  In fact, if he did, it indicates a long-term and continuous attention to the  inhabitants of earth as he zapped various species at strategic moments in time to fabricate a wondrous and spectacular existence for all of us.  Not exactly a six-day creation, but more consistent with the ageless existence of God.

As Richard Dawkins says, "Phantasmagoric!"

________________

  

Read my earlier post on My Problems with Evolutionary Theory here.

And the follow-up,  Evolution on Steroids here.

My Problems with Evolutionary Theory

  I have a logical, scientific mind, and I have trouble with some of the assumptions made by evolution scientists.  Maybe I haven't read the right stuff yet and maybe I will happen upon some sensible explanations at some point, but here's where I am right now.

  First let me say that I don't have a problem with energy and matter and physics and astronomy and geology.  I believe the universe is really old.  Just last month astronomers reported the discovery of the farthest away, oldest galaxy (named z8_GND_5296) at the other side of the cosmos.  It is 13 billion light years away, making the universe at least that old.  The Big Bang that apparently started it all is entirely logical to me and consistent with what I see when I look up into the sky at night.  I am fully aware that what I see is not current but rather a snapshot of the universe the way it was millions and billions of years ago.

  Similarly, while I was in college my geological studies led me to conclude that the earth is millions of years old.  I could see it in the fossils and strata that I was digging up with my little rock hammer in the strip mines of southern Indiana and in the cut-away cliffs of the Rockies.

  So my problems are not with the physical sciences.  I am not a young earth theorist;  that doesn't make any sense to me.  At this point my fundamentalist creationist friends and I part company.

  But I'm also having trouble with some of the foundational biological premises of evolution.  Here's where my evolutionist friends and I part scientific company:

Problem #1:  You can't evolve if you can't reproduce.  Evolution requires time.  Lots of time.  Millions of years of evolutionary process must take place to deliver any noticeable change in a species.  And evolution also requires reproduction - lots of it - and right from the outset.  But if you can't reproduce, how can you evolve?  You don't have the luxury of millions of years to grow a male penis and then millions more years to develop a female vagina, and then millions of millennia to produce reproductive cells and everything else that goes with the reproductive systems, male and female.  It all has to be working in the first generation in order to have a second generation, if you know what I mean.  Excuse my explicit logic here, but if you can't procreate, you're screwed...  in a manner of speaking.  It doesn't require a whole lot of thought to arrive at the obvious conclusion that it is not possible for reproductive systems to evolve.  There must have been some creative point of origination when everything was suddenly working.  But is that still evolution?

  In the evolutionary sequence (called the Tree of Life) there is a huge gap between the slime molds and the duckbilled platypus, early ancestors of humans.  Somewhere in that gap sexual reproduction had to develop, and it had to show up all at once, along with a lot of other things.  This is a big problem, because natural selection does not have the balls for this; it is not a viable operative here.  Biologically speaking, natural selection can't get 'er done.

Problem #2:  Mutations can't close the gaps.  Natural selection (sometimes called the survival of the fittest) assumes that the positive adaptations of nature will live on to further evolve and the negative mutations will die out.  That's fine within species, but it seems pretty farfetched when trying to evolve from one life form to the next.  It is counterintuitive for me to concur with an evolutionary timeline that is a virtual continuum of development from lesser to greater, from simple to complex, from dumb to smart.  In my view, there's an insurmountable gap between every major family and the next higher life form. (See Hillis' completely sequenced genome Tree of Life here or Darwin's and several other early models here.)

A simplified version of evolutionary sequence called  Tree of Life

  On the contrary, a more panoramic observation reveals a slow decline of the biological world.  There are fewer species of plant and animal life on the earth now than there were last year or last epoch.  So the dinosaurs are gone, along with the dodo birds and a bunch of other cool stuff, gone forever.  Occasionally a scientist discovers a new butterfly in the Amazon jungle, but it is not really a new insect, just a newly discovered insect.  Many species are lost every year.  The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) reports in their latest update to the Red List of Threatened Species, which reviews more than 60,000 species, that 25 per cent of mammals on the list are at risk of extinction.
In my mind, this points to a grand beginning and a slow diminishing of biodiversity.  Natural selection and the tree of life standing on its head, if you will.

Problem #3:  The Missing Links are still missing.  There should be transitional forms of every kind of organism in the fossil record.  But there aren't.  150 years after Darwin published On the Origin of Species (1859), they are still missing.  300-million-year-old fossils of the sea turtles show no significant variation from those alive in the ocean today.  Fossils exist of plants and animals that are now extinct, amazing things we have not seen before, but there have been found no viable transitional forms between the frog and the cat, the cat and the dog, the dog and the horse.  And there should be.  In fact, there should be millions upon millions of these "in-between" specimens embedded in the earth's crust, and with the thousands of archeologists who are on the job around the world, these should be emerging from the soil every day to be displayed in our newspapers, our science classrooms and our museums.  But they're not.

  Logically, this makes me think there was a definite point in time for the origination of each plant and animal group.

Problem #4:  DNA lacks creativity.  Adaptation falls short.  Adaptations can be the results of external forces applied on a particular life form.  So humans who lived in the tropics for many generations developed dark skin for their own protection.  And when they migrate to temperate climate zones they continue to birth babies with dark skin for many generations following, because of an essential change in the DNA when they lived in the tropics.

  But the original adaptation was a mutation, an adjustment to the DNA in response to an outside stimulus: sunlight.  This is the normal modus operandi for adaptations.

  But DNA do not have a mind of their own.  They are a reliable code or program that is automatically followed, usually without variation, a consistent phenomena called genetic homeostasis.  They cannot originate new body parts.  They cannot convene a committee and collaborate to develop an organ, a system or a sense, like the sense of sight, for example.  They cannot initiate a group effort to form an eyeball with a cornea, retina, optic nerve and eventually a center in the brain that interprets sight from nervous impulses - even though their blind host organism would certainly benefit from it if they could.  DNA are oblivious to the needs and wants of their host; they are not able to initiate these necessary monumental changes; they are barely able to react and adapt to outside stimuli and only do it infrequently and reluctantly through an occasional mutation.

  What I'm getting at here is that complex systems like digestion and breathing and circulation and the senses of sight and smell and so on, could not be generated by ignorant DNA.  Without the help of some miraculous, creative outside force, they cannot cause the countless improvements that are essential for the evolutionary process.

   Many evolutionists give examples of adaptations as proof of evolution, and indeed, it is essential to the entire scheme.  But adaptations never have and never will change one type of animal into another as evolutionary processes require.  Thousands of miraculous mutations - strategic upgrades - would have to take place for this to happen.  Yet this remains the foundational core of evolutionary theory.

  So I think that much of evolution science rides along on the backs of some very hopeful but unlikely hypotheses.  I have talked to some of my evolutionary friends about these fundamental gaps, and no one has offered explanations for any of this.  I guess maybe Charles Darwin could be excused for his optimism, hoping that science would eventually fill in the gaps, but I'm a bit more skeptical.  I am not comfortable with the cognitive dissonance that natural selection creates for me; it's just too fantastic.

  When my daughter came home from her first year at university she told me that her professor had said that, "Evolution has pretty much been proven by now."  My first thought was, "Really? When did that happen?"  Scientists don't even agree among themselves about the classifications of the simplest life forms.  In their search for the earliest universal ancestor evolutionary biologists are discovering that "...the emerging picture is far more complicated than had been expected, and the ancestor's features remain ill-defined.... Five years ago we were very confident and arrogant in our ignorance; said Dr. Eugene Loonin of the National Center for Biotechnology Information.  'Now we are starting to see the true complexity of life."*
  It seems that the more information that scientists gather, the less there is that they are certain of. (See also, Oldest Human DNA Reveals Mysterious Branch of Humanity for more speculation on human ancestry.)

  Post Script:  There is a battle continuing between creationists and evolutionists that is as unscientific as it is polarized.  I think part of the problem is the "package deal" that both sides are expected to embrace.  The creationists have a complete platform that they promote including an actual 6-day creation and a young earth (7000 years old) theory turned to dogma.  The evolutionists do the same, driven by the prerequisite that there be no intelligent creator in the equation.  And both sides have made their platform into a political and an emotional campaign.  Both sides overlook the obvious.

  When it comes to the origin of species, I am a man without a country, so to speak.   As you can see in this post, I do not subscribe to either traditional platform.  I think it is more reasonable to take an objective approach that is based on observation and real scientific evidence and without initial bias.

  My study and interest in this will be on-going, and I'm looking for facts. Conjecture is fine at the start.  That's where the scientific method begins.  But when reliable results aren't forthcoming after 150 years of study, it may be time to look for other answers.

  Also, please notice that I wrote this entire post in the first person.  That is an attempt to keep my friends from becoming offended and disowning me.  I respect the right of everybody to have their point of view, and I haven't made suggestions about what anyone else should believe about evolution; I have simply stated my own opinion.

Thank you for reading!

To make a comment or to suggest the next expert that I should study on the subject, click on "Post a Comment" below.  (There will be a delay before it is posted as I have to moderate all incoming comments.)  Thanks again!

* Nicholas Wade, The New York Times, article "Tree of Life Turns Out to Have Complex Roots".
   --Cartoons by Mueller and Ham, in The Funny Times, December 2013, Volume 28, Issue 12