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Darwin’s Failed Predictions: 4, 5

2008-01-07
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[Editor's Note: This article shows slides 4 and 5 in a series of 14 slides available at JudgingPBS.com, a new website featuring "Darwin's Failed Predictions," a response to PBS-NOVA's online materials for their "Judgment Day: Intelligent Design on Trial" documentary.]

Slide 4: “The role of natural selection in evolution is controversial among scientists (continued)”

As discussed in Slide #1, proponents of Darwinism often employ the “Evolution” Bait-and-Switch, using evidence for small-scale changes and then over-extrapolating to claim that such modest evidence proves Darwin’s grander claims. In fact, this is precisely what PBS does in its online materials for “Judgment Day: Intelligent Design on Trial.”

A PBS web slide asserts, “Evolution happens through natural selection,” and then goes on to discuss small-scale changes in the sizes of beaks in finches on the Galapagos Islands as supporting evidence. Such small-scale changes do not demonstrate that natural selection can cause large-scale evolutionary changes, such as the origin of new body plans or perhaps even the origin of new species. In fact, all of the finch species in the Galapagos Islands remain so genetically similar that they can interbreed after millions of years of alleged evolutionary change.

If anything, the Galapagos finches demonstrate the limits of natural selection. Beak sizes increased during a drought, yet when the drought ended, finch-beaks predictably returned to their normal sizes. As biologist Jonathan Wells observes in Icons of Evolution, the bait-and-switch occurs when “evidence for oscillating natural selection in finch beaks is claimed as evidence for the origin of finches in the first place.”1 Are such Darwinist extrapolations warranted? According to UC Berkeley law professor and Darwin-critic Phillip Johnson, “When our leading scientists have to resort to the sort of distortion that would land a stock promoter in jail, you know they are in trouble.”2

References Cited:
1. Jonathan Wells, Icons of Evolution: Why Much of what we teach about evolution is wrong, page 174 (Regnery, 2000).
2. Phillip Johnson, “The Church of Darwin,” The Wall Street Journal (August, 16, 1999).

Slide 5. “Opening Darwin’s black box”

“Darwin was ignorant of the reason for variation within a species,” writes Lehigh University biochemist Michael Behe in his book Darwin’s Black Box, “but biochemistry has identified the molecular basis for it.”1 There were other things that Darwin did not know. For example, Darwin assumed that the cell was like a primitive blob of protoplasm that could easily evolve new biological functions. As Behe explains, “To Darwin, then, as to every other scientist of the time, the cell was a black box. … The question of how life works was not one that Darwin or his contemporaries could answer.”2

Modern technology has allowed biochemists to open Darwin’s black box, revealing a micro-world of mind-boggling complexity. Even leading proponents of evolution have acknowledged this complexity. Past U.S. National Academy of Sciences President Bruce Alberts has described this complexity in the journal Cell as an elaborate factory: “The entire cell can be viewed as a factory that contains an elaborate network of interlocking assembly lines, each of which is composed of a set of large protein machines.”3

But could such integrated complexity evolve in a stepwise, Darwinian fashion? Behe recalls that in Origin of Species, Darwin admitted that if “any complex organ existed which could not possibly have been formed by numerous, successive, slight modifications, my theory would absolutely break down.”4 According to Behe, “by opening the ultimate black box, the cell,” modern biochemistry “has pushed Darwin’s theory to the limit.”5

The simplest cell requires hundreds of genes, numerous complex biological machines and biochemical pathways, and a fully functional genetic code in order to survive. Darwinian evolution – blind natural selection acting on random mutations – has failed to provide Darwinian explanations for how basic cellular biochemistry might have evolved. Five years after Behe published Darwin’s Black Box, biochemist Franklin Harold stated an Oxford University Press monograph that “there are presently no detailed Darwinian accounts of the evolution of any biochemical or cellular system, only a variety of wishful speculations.”6

References Cited:
1. Michael J. Behe, Darwin’s Black Box: The biochemical challenge to evolution, page X (Free Press, 1996).
2. Michael J. Behe, Darwin’s Black Box: The biochemical challenge to evolution, pages 9-10 (Free Press, 1996).
3. Bruce Alberts, “The Cell as a Collection of Protein Machines: Preparing the Next Generation of Molecular Biologists,” Cell, Vol. 92:291 (February 8, 1998).
4. Charles Darwin, Origin of Species (1859), Chapter 6, available at http://www.literature.org/authors/darwin-charles/the-origin-of-species/chapter-06.html.
5. Michael J. Behe, Darwin’s Black Box: The biochemical challenge to evolution, page 15 (Free Press, 1996).
6. Franklin M. Harold, The Way of the Cell: Molecules, Organisms and the Order of Life, page 205 (Oxford University Press, 2001).

sources: slide 4, slide 5

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  • rastus

    As to some hypothetical intelligence of a genome itself, that splendidly explains why the great majority of species that have ever existed are now extinct, right?

    Actually, yes, it does. Or at least could. It’s certainly worth considering, IMHO.

    As a mind exercise, let’s take as a major premise that there is an intelligence inherent to the genome, which purpose is to best adapt life to whatever environmental conditions prevail.

    One minor premise might be that such an intelligence must of necessity not operate too quickly, lest it overreact to temporary changes and leave a species unable to survive in a restored status quo. But in reacting slowly, cataclysmic changes, such a a comet strike, will inevitably cause that strategy to fail. It may be intelligent, but nobody’s claiming that it’s omniscient, nor that it will necessarily be able to achieve similar results in all species. It still has to work with the raw material that each species in its current configuration provides it. Like ourselves, sometimes it wins, and sometimes it fails miserably.

    Alternately, one could choose the minor premise that the purpose of an inherent intelligence might be to effect adaptation to environmental stresses more efficiently than random mutation could possibly achieve. In that case, would it not be reasonable to conclude that if sustaining life as a whole is the ultimate goal, then perhaps the most efficient means of sustaining it is to allow species that no longer further that goal to die off?

    Just musing here, but consider the very long time it took for life on Earth to develop past the stage of simple single-celled organisms, and the vastly more brief time thereafter, when complex life virtually exploded. Could it not be that what was actually necessary to evolve, and what took so long, was the base-level genomic intelligence that subsequently allowed life to design itself? Sort of like robots that use a rudimentary intelligence to design ever more intelligent and capable new models. If so, then it both explains the flaws in Darwinian theory relative to speciation, as well as supporting the notion that random mutation had a hand in the development of life on Earth.

    Of course, it might be that none of this is correct, and the answer lies neither in ID nor in strict Darwinism. But the instant we shut down any path of inquiry because it offends our bias against any hint of the supernatural, we cease to be scientific in our method.

  • http://mensnewsdaily.com/author/mike-lasalle Mike LaSalle

    Have you ever actually read the play?

    Oh course I have read Hamlet. And Julius Caesar (still my favorite), and Richard III (“Dive, thoughts, down to my soul”), and Titus Andronicus, and of course The Taming of the Shrew …. and plenty more. My folks had lots of books in the house when I was growing up. The Bard was a family pass time….

    Please don’t insult me, Palinurus. I am an educated person. I don’t believe the Earth is 6000 years old, but I do indeed believe that there are mountains of truths hidden in plain sight from the mundane expectations of Popper’s epistemology.

  • http://weirus.oplink.net/ Palinurus

    Hmm. Like ghosts? Have you ever actually read the play? As you may recall, Hamlet by no means accepted the apparition as the ghost of his father – until it started telling him what he wanted to hear. The Elizabethan audience was not so simply credulous, and clearly some modern audiences are less philosophically sophisticated. As to some hypothetical intelligence of a genome itself, that splendidly explains why the great majority of species that have ever existed are now extinct, right? That “Omega Point” fantasy is fun to play with, but to suppose that it actually happened or could happen requires a piling of Ossa upon Pelion upon Olympus of speculation and unprovable assumptions and discarding the idea of causality, and there is only wishful thinking to suggest that information is conserved inside a black hole.
    “The multiverse, in my opinion, guarantees the existence of God.”
    One fantasy guarantees another. Great. Have you collected your Ethiopian millions yet?

  • http://weirus.oplink.net/ Palinurus

    “Shakespeare has a perfect comeback to orthodox Darwinists: “There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.” (Hamlet, Act I scene V)”

  • http://mensnewsdaily.com/author/mike-lasalle Mike LaSalle

    Casey Luskin made some very good points in his December 7, 2007 podcast, “Is There a Double Standard When It Comes to ID and Testability?”

    When ID skeptics object to the claim that the universe was designed based upon the highly improbable ‘fine-tuning’ of the universe, they often cite the possibility that there are actually an infinite number of universes — or multiverses — and our universe just happened to win a cosmic lottery to get the conditions right for life.

    And infinite number of universes, they argue, reduces the odds that ours just “happened to get it right” because it shows that some universes were bound to get the right conditions for life eventually.

    However, a Nature article published January 6, 2006 noted that this multiverse hypothesis is not testable. The Nature article wrote, “Since the early 1980s, some cosmologists have argued that multiple universes could have formed during a period of cosmic inflation that preceded the Big Bang. More recently, String Theorists have calculated that there could have been 10 to the 500th universes, which is more than the number of atoms in our observable universe. Under these circumstances it becomes more reasonable to assume that several would turn out like ours. It’s like getting zillions and zillions of darts thrown at the dart board, says Susskind. ‘Surely, a large number of them are going to end up in the target zone.’ And of course we exist in our universe, because we couldn’t exist anywhere else. It’s an intriguing idea with just one problem, says Gross: it’s impossible to disprove. Because our universe is almost by definition everything we can observe, there are no apparent measurements that can confirm whether we exist within a cosmic landscape of multiple universes, or if ours is the only one. And because we cannot falsify the idea, Gross says, it isn’t science.”

    Ironically, the National Academy of Sciences member, Leonard Susskind, was given print space, saying that we shouldn’t reject the multiverse hypothesis on the grounds that it isn’t testable. Susskind, too, finds it deeply troubling that there’s no way to test the principle, but he isn’t yet ready to rule it out completely. Says Susskind in Nature: “It would be very foolish to throw out the right answer on the basis that it doesn’t conform to some criteria for what is or isn’t science.”

    Many scientists challenge ID on the grounds that it isn’t testable. Plainly, the multi-universe hypothesis is not testable. Yet you see prominent physicists like Leonard Susskind arguing that, even it it isn’t testable, “it would be very foolish to throw out the right answer on the basis that it doesn’t conform to some criteria for what is or isn’t science.”

    If an ID proponent made such a claim, you would never see it in Nature. Nonetheless, ID is testable. But when critics claim ID is not testable, no one in the scientific community gives ID proponents the courtesy given to Dr. Susskind. Could you imagine Nature quoting William Dembsky is he said, “It would be very foolish to throw out the right answer on the basis that it doesn’t conform to some criteria for what is or isn’t science”?

    Perhaps there is a double standard at work in the scientific community regarding Intelligent Design and testability.

    Notwithstanding Casey’s excellent point that there is a “double standard at work in the scientific community regarding Intelligent Design and testability”, I personally think that the multiverse theory holds within it the fruits of a proof for the existence of God as defined by Frank Tipler in his Omega Point Theory. This is because — assuming the multiverse is true — in some iterations of the multiverse, Tipler’s conditions for the creation of the Omega Point will become real.

    Note that the Omega Point Theory requires that the universe collapse into a closed three-sphere (see David Deutsch – chapter 14, The Fabric of Reality). According to Tipler, the universe will collapse into a three-sphere ONLY if an intelligent agency develops a fleet of self-replicating von Neumann probes for the purpose of destroying the universe’s free baryons. (It is the existence of free baryons that is causing the universe to inflate.) By destroying a critical mass of these baryons, the universe will indeed collapse into a three-sphere, allowing for the emergence of the Omega Point, which is itself identified as God.

    In other words, if the multiverse is true, then it is inevitable that — at least in one universe of the 10 to the 500th that are expected to exist — the Omega Point will in fact emerge. And God only needs to emerge ONCE in order for him to become God, the Self-Creating Creator of all possible universes.

    The multiverse, in my opinion, guarantees the existence of God.

  • http://mensnewsdaily.com/author/mike-lasalle Mike LaSalle

    It is possible, for instance, entirely in keeping with the concept of intelligent design, to question whether the genome itself might have a form of intelligence that allows it to respond to environmental stresses, without ever having to rely on religion or some concept of a supernatural hand. It is not, as the scoffers would have one believe, irrational to ask such questions; they just violate their worldview, so must be suppressed.

    That is an excellent point. Darwinists would indeed shut down such a concept because they would see it as too closely tied to metaphysics.

    Shakespeare has a perfect comeback to orthodox Darwinists: “There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.” (Hamlet, Act I scene V)

  • Squiggy

    Simple questions. No answers. Just pathetic comebacks without any substance whatsoever. Very scientific, darwinists.

  • rastus

    I really love the religious fervor with which Darwinists resort to all sorts of name-calling when confronted with the legitimate questions that ID raises. So fearful are they that their own Darwinian religion is being called into question that they seem willing to shut off all further inquiry. Kinda like the global warming debate. But in the very act of shutting off that inquiry, they violate the very scientific method they claim to cherish.

    This is not to say that ID offers any answers, nor that every point it raises is valid — it’s still developing as a thought process, after all — only that it does point out where strict Darwinian theory fails according to the theory’s creator himself. Chief among those failures, and what Darwinists have yet to explain to my satisfaction, is the very issue of how massively complex structures that require a complete process for survival could possibly have evolved stepwise, as Darwinian theory insists, or how entirely new ones develop that way.

    The problem, it seems to me, is that the proponents of Darwinian evolution are so intent on removing any hint of the supernatural from science that they refuse to consider the question of whether there is an intelligence to how life’s diversity has come about. It is possible, for instance, entirely in keeping with the concept of intelligent design, to question whether the genome itself might have a form of intelligence that allows it to respond to environmental stresses, without ever having to rely on religion or some concept of a supernatural hand. It is not, as the scoffers would have one believe, irrational to ask such questions; they just violate their worldview, so must be suppressed.

  • http://weirus.oplink.net/ Palinurus

    Jeez, I’m too tired. Yammer on, fool. Can I get a hallelujah from the choir?







Right.

Man up.

Buy the book now on Amazon.com. Or listen to Ronnie tell a story at escaping-from-reality.com.

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