mazingly, it is not just “laymen” who talk admiringly of evolution having designed all the amazing features we A see in the countless species of Life around us. Naturists also ramble on adoringly as to how Evolution has designed all the various species to fit their environment. Of course, they use the term “designed” only when speaking casually.
“Designed”, it seems, becomes “a distortion of logic” only when expressed in Creationist terms. Rather, they speak of an animal having “adapted” to the environment. And don’t think of it as a process that will have happened quickly. The polar bear, it seems, developed the thick fur that protects it from sub-zero temperatures over millions of years—though somehow having avoided to die all this time!
Naturally, experts in biology will take the above pointer as very simplistic. But in reality this viewpoint is only whipped out when such simple and logical observations emanate from non-specialists. And it is not because the biologists have any real rejoinders. They simply throw back two main points at the hapless enquirer.
The first—often not delivered as directly as I put it now, but nevertheless implicit in their response—is, “Well, we are the experts; we took the time and trouble to study animals and plants and we know how they are made up. We are basically agreed that that is what happened while you, I’m afraid, can only talk…but with no profound or actual knowledge of the make-up of the species”.
Of course, embedded in these arguments are a plethora of non-sequiturs. Indeed, logic dictates that if one knows the intimacies and intricacies of how an animal is made up, it does 9
Chapter Three Evolution’s Great Fallacy: Part 1
not follow that one knows how that make-up came about.
There is nothing forensic to help one out in that way.
The second rejoinder by believers in Evolution (not all biologists find “Evolution” to be convincing) is that there can be no other explanation…other than to believe in a Designer, which has its own set of problems. But as we saw, both sides of the argument have not solved the problem of the illogicalness of a Grand Beginning. Nor can scientists tell you how the basic elements driving existence came to be. They simply play the axiom card.
As we saw, the only advantage atheists have over believers in a Designer (God) is that if such a powerful being came to be—
even as a mysterious axiom— why is such a being playing the Absentee Landlord? Is such a being really there? Why do we seem so abandoned to our own devices, to our own survival?
Since the question of an Absentee Landlord is an involved one where much water has to first pass under the bridge before we can tackle it squarely, it is reserved for a later chapter.
Getting back to our polar bear observation, when we read carefully between the lines we find that Science theorizes that certain beneficial genetic mutations allowed “what is now the polar bear” to grow a little more fur than others. This meant it could venture further north and survive, then pass those genes to offspring who thus “adapted” to the colder environment much better than their old cousins who they left behind.
Let us accept this explanation for a moment. What it means is that the staggering variety of species we see around us each had a beneficial genetic mutation that allowed it to outcompete all its nearest rivals in the environment and pass its genes to offspring who then became dominant there. This is the theory of Natural Selection.
So although Scientists speak of species as having “adapted”
to the environment, in reality they are talking of a series of genetic mutations that fortuitously helped the species to better survive. So, in a balanced ecology whereby the polar bear has 10
sufficient food to eat, it being a carnivorous animal means other species have also survived the very harsh environment of the polar region…but in so many different ways.
Since the uncountable variety of species all emanate from the same original “mother and father” according to Evolutionists, where they differ with Creationists is that they are tied to the Darwin’s theory of the Origins of Species—which speaks of commonality and branching out—whereas Creationists see the species as made for the environment. Their basis is in the fact that many species live in environments others cannot survive in, e.g. sea, land, polar region, etc. Let us debate this.
In life there is a maxim “why fix it if it ain’t broke?” Broadly speaking if something—a design— already works very well in given circumstances, we would rather tweak it than design something else from scratch. But both Evolution and Natural Selection seem to buck this trend with regular impunity. You find plenty of hugely different species surviving in the same environment…and one even being food for the other: a rare beneficial mutation snapped up in one ferocious gobble.
Let us talk about rarity. Our polar bear waited a million years or more for a fortuitous genetic mutation to trigger the event of a thick coat of fur. Mathematically though, it is no simple matter to embed a code—the RNA and DNA in genes—that ensures that the mother gives off an offspring that looks like her and her mate.
Now, genes sometimes make errors in the process of being passed on, especially if affected by stimuli such as radiation.
But these are rare. Instead, mathematical wisdom tells us that spontaneous genetic changes are more likely to be erroneous than beneficial. Indeed, functionality in a complex system or machine is a very delicate matter wherein many parts operate as one. If a spontaneous change occurs, there is a 99% chance that the change will adversely affect the system—and thus the functionality of the organism. Again, “why fix it when it ain’t broke” is the way most factories operate.
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Chapter Three Evolution’s Great Fallacy: Part 1
So, mathematically, many more errors ought to be made from genetic mutations, than benefits. But fossil records do not exactly abound with errors of dysfunctional species. We do not see countless strange species whose erroneous mutations gave them little chance of survival. All have stereoscopic vision or compound eyes in exactly the right place; all have limbs that support locomotion; all have the balance and symmetry of design no matter how “strange” looking.
There is not even proper evidence of evolutionary “missing links”. Examples tendered are almost invariably samples of fully functional species that seem more like variations of a particular design. Indeed, our ape-cousin has hand-like feet and an agility that favored its survival…an advantage that Natural Selection would have more likely kept. But we humans don’t have them. These beneficial designs certainly wouldn’t have interfered with fire or the wheel as advancements. And this brings us to another point.
A simplistic ethos prevails that, for example, if ape-cousin found fire and so preferred caves to trees, he will lose the hand-feet. In converse fashion, a cat regularly put in water will eventually grow fins. Okay…maybe not quite as dramatic as all that—but the same outlook packaged in suitably “high-falutin”
words. The overall ethos is that continued and unavoidable proximity to a certain environment is likely to trigger a beneficial mutation that—in the very long run—eventually helps a species adapt to that environment.
Now, Charles Darwin—the originator of the “evolution”
concept—once encountered a flower with a stamen (the part that insects pollinate) inlaid so deep inside the flower that no known insect had the proboscis to reach there, Darwin, though, comfortably predicted that there was one. More than a century later, after many nights of stalking with a remote camera and a lot of wasted film, one lucky night the camera captured this amazing insect as it unfolded an amazingly long proboscis!
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Darwin, of course, had given no allowance that the particular insect was designed for that flower, or vice versa. No…in his view the insect adapted to that flower; it underwent a desired bodily change that eventually resolved the “need” to make the rather unique flower become successful.
Indeed, with the casual way even scientists talk, a layman can be excused for concluding that scientists are actually saying that there is a kind of psychic link between a) genes, b) the needs of a species, and c) the environment—as if each had a periscope into the other and could respond appropriately each time; or as if these three factors sit nicely in line, waiting to complement each other to benefit the species.
However, to somewhat mitigate the rather precarious idea of
“a quasi-psychic link”, scientists resort to ascribing millions of years to random mutations that eventually “hit the right button”! Let us duly consider this further in the next chapter and then attempt to put the entire matter to bed.
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