Charles Darwin’s book, The Origin of Species was published in 1859. It’s generally accepted as sound Science that Darwinian evolution is the operating system to biological diversity on earth. Have you ever heard of the multiple serious challenges to Darwinian Evolution? Probably not, as any scientific dissent is heavily stifled.
In a completely scientific sense there are holes in Darwin’s theory that introduce real debate. Here are a few of the topics of contention I picked up from a really great, but complex book called Darwin’s Black Box by Lehigh University Biochemistry professor Michael Behe.
One challenge is that while we may understand how complex biological systems operate, we have no idea how they came to be. The second is that there are biological mechanisms such as blood clotting, ciliated cells and the immune system that are so complex they defy the Darwinian model of step by step evolution. This phenomenon is called “irreducible complexity” by the dissenting scientific community. The third is a re-examination of the fossil record, which is purported to have almost no evidence of macro-evolutionary transitional life forms. I had to re-learn that ”Micro-evolution” is adaptation within a species, such as finches getting longer beaks during a drought, or bacterium developing defenses against antibiotics. “Macro-evolution” is where one species morphs into another, such as a fish evolving into a frog, and is a necessary construct of Darwinian evolution.
Let’s look at the first query. How did life come from non-life? At Cal Poly, I was taught that science had already solved this little problem. University of Chicago scientist Stanley Miller had hypothesized that if he could re-create the early earth’s atmosphere of methane, ammonia, water vapor and hydrogen and add a large dose of electricity, he could simulate the conditions that propelled non-life to become life. Problem was, he didn’t exactly accomplish that, but what he did discover was that he could create more complex chemical combinations, known as amino acids. Scientists cheered the world over. Add in a spoonful of unknown natural processes that guided amino acids to come together to form proteins, and tah-dah! The materials for making the machines of life were deemed to be present and plentiful on the early earth. Miller then added the theory that proteins would somehow need to have been trapped inside cell like membranes and eventually the first self replicating cell would be born. Whew ! – But professor, how did life come from non-life?
A prominent researcher Klaus Dose summed it up this way. “40 years of experimentation in the origins of life in chemical and molecular evolution have led to a better perception of the enormity of the problem, but no solutions. What we have is that 40 years of intense experimentation and research has led to a unified answer… We don’t know”
Then there is the concept Behe brings up called irreducible complexity. His argument is that at the molecular level the interdependencies of the parts of life’s systems are so complicated that they could not have evolved step by step. To use the example of the Human eye, Darwin explained the anatomical structures of eyes, trying to draw a line from a light sensitive spot in a simple organism through a cluster of these cells in a depression with a gelatinous covering to a sophisticated eye with a lens. The limitations of the 1800’s didn’t allow Darwin to comprehend the Biochemical impossibility of connecting these structures that Behe details in his book. Each of the anatomical steps that Darwin thought were so simple, actually involve staggeringly complicated biochemical processes that cannot be papered over with evolutionary rhetoric. Behe takes 4 examples, the blood clotting mechanism, the ciliated cell, a cells’ internal transport mechanism, and the immune system and shows how biochemically Darwin’s theory breaks down at the cellular and biochemical level.
The final argument centers on how the Fossil record holds little evidence or clues how one species evolved into another. Think about it, there should be scads of remnants of half bird - half bats and every other trans-species evolutionary creature, right? The fossil record is amazingly devoid of any of these macro evolutionary beings remains. The fossil record also shows a huge simultaneous emergence of lots of new species in one era, called The Cambrian Explosion, where everything seemed to appear at once. This is the stuff of Darwinian nightmares, but there it is. No gradual morphing from pre-historic Toad to Teddy Kennedy is to be found in the fossil record, albeit the logic of such an ancestral chain. All in all Darwin’s Black Box is an intelligent challenge to one of the most stringent orthodoxies of our era.
2 comments:
Oh Jeezus. First, irreducible complexity isn't, and was, in fact originally predicted in the 1920's as a natural result of evolution by natural selection (it was then called "interlocking complexity"). Secondly, there is so suppression of dissent: everyone that studied biology to any depth is aware of the creationist/ID "challenges". We don't talk about them much because they aren't much: in fact, most of them aren't worth the paper they are written on. Then, micro- and macro-evolution differ in degree only, not qualitatively. Macroevolution is an accumulation of many microevolutionary events. Finally, "half-bird/half-bat"? Are you serious? That has got to be some weird creationist joke, since bats are mammals and birds, retiles (quite dinosaurian ones at that). And transitional species are found in scads: look up Prothero's "Evolution: What the Fossils Say and Why It Matters", for a recent treatment of the subject.
Behe's screed is old and has been debunked repeatedly, but he still keeps pressing the same old claims and ignoring all rebuttals, which is intellectually dishonest to say the least.
Jorgon, Thanks for the post. You ought to talk with any Bio Chem professor who challenges Darwinian doctrine and see what they say. No dissent allowed is what they tell me, at least here in California. Are you aware of all the frauds perpetrated in the name of Darwinian science ? Haeckels embryo's, the Peppered moths of england, etc. are all still used in textbooks as proof of evolution even though they are admitted by the authors as fraudulent ! Behe's work is sound science. Show me a peer eviewed refutation of the flagellated cell discussion he poses ?
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