I found your answer to the question of whether the modern theory of evolution is valid scientifically. As a Christian Darwinist and a zoology/botany undergrad, this subject is very near to my heart. Please forgive me if I overstep my bounds in criticizing a professor, but I found several problems in your answer. Your text, to which I am responding, I will put in quotation marks. [Mine is in italics.]

"When I first became a Christian, I assumed that the correct answer was that the Bible is not a science book, and that the first chapters of the Book of Genesis should be understood in a figurative or poetical sense; they could then be interpreted in a manner consistent with the scientifically proven Theory of Evolution. Many Christians hold this view, including some of my favorite theologians."

Indeed, I myself hold this view; without it, it is impossible to reconcile the theory of evolution with the Bible.

"But I was challenged by a friend to look at the scientific evidence for the Theory of Evolution before making up my mind about my answer, and having done so, I find that fewer inconsistencies arise if I interpret the first chapters of Genesis as narrative, not poetry. This means that the Theory of Evolution, as a theory of the origin of life or of the origin of the species, is wrong."

In my education, I followed the exact opposite trend: I started out in high school as a literal Creationist, but after seriously weighing the scientific evidence, found that the theory of evolution is wholly valid scientifically; that the mechanisms it proposes *are* in fact sufficient to explain observed phenomena, and that in fact the Biblically literal story does not in fact explain all observed phenomena!

"Fist of all, much of what we call evolution has nothing to do with the origin or the species or the book of Genesis. Christian scientist in the 19th Century utilized something like the concept of the survival of the fittest to explain the large number of variations observed in the plant and animal kingdom. Did God have to create both red squirrels and brown squirrels? Did God really create 1000s of kinds of beetles or 100s of kinds of bats? No. He created basic types which had within them the potential variations that, through interactions with specific environments, have developed into the rich variety seen in creation today."

This concept of common ancestry is, of course, key to Darwin's scheme. But here you have stopped this concept of morphological radiation from an ancestor at a low level on the phyletic tree. There are thousands upon thousands of species of beetles (roughly one quarter of all animal species are beetles!) because they all descended from the same ancestor species. But there are more thousands of insects, which descended from an ancestor further back on the phyletic tree. If God had created, say, the ancestor of wasps and bees separately from the ancestor of beetles, then why do beetles and wasps show evidence of common ancestry? If you accept that God created the ancestors of insects separately from the ancestors of other animals, then why do insects and crustaceans show evidence of common ancestry? The forms of living animals share characteristics in such a way as to suggest that they descended from a single common ancestral species. This series of characteristics does not stop at the low taxonomic levels of genus or family, but rather continues up through the highest taxonomic levels. (The study of these branching events, incidentally, is called cladistics; an explanation of its methods can be found in the first part of a research paper I wrote, which can be accessed on this site.

"Where I and many other Christians part company with scientists like Carl Sagan and Jay Gould . . ."

As a side note, Carl Sagan is more of an astronomer than an evolutionary biologist. Dr. Gould is a highly respected evolutionary biologist, but his actual name is Stephen Jay Gould.

". . . is whether survival of the fittest is a sufficient mechanism to explain the origin of the species; more explicitly, do we have a sound, scientific explanation of how the rich variety of life on earth today arose from inanimate matter through a series of increasingly complex forms,"

One common misconception about the theory of evolution is that through it, simple forms progress towards more complex ones. In actuality, the theory says only that pre-existing forms are modified. Those pre-existing forms may be extraordinarily complex to begin with, and then simplified as its function changes or is specialized; thus evolution does *not* progress always from simple to complex forms. Evolutionists say that forms may be primitive or derived. A primitive form, by definition, is a form which is possessed by the ancestral species and which may or may not be present in its descendants, while a derived form is possessed only by the descendant species. Thus whether a form is primitive or ancestral is relative. The single jaw bone of mammals is derived compared to ancestral reptiles, but primitive compared to different groups of mammals.

". . . culminating in the appearance of self consciousness, culture, morality, and ethics?"

The existence of these apparently non-adaptive aspects of the human species is often pointed to by creationists as evidence against natural selection. Their argument is that the "fittest" individuals look out primarily for themselves, in a world whose law is "eat or be eaten." But "fitness" is more subtle than that. If social groups allow members a better chance of survival, then those individuals who are more prone to form and maintain social groups (i.e. those who can love and who need to be loved, those who are able to behave according to social rules and not be rejected by the group, etc.) are fitter than individuals who do not function well with a group. Thus in some species there is selection pressure that results in a species with highly social behavior, such as that exhibited by primates (including humans). Characteristics such as ethics and morality may be argued by any evolutionist (religious or not) to be due to an extension of this phenomenon, or they may be explained by a religious evolutionist as being due to the effects of a divine soul combined with the physical body produced by evolution.

"As an 18 year old who had grown up loving everything related to science, I was shocked to find that the preponderance of the scientific evidence (not opinion) is against such a conclusion."

As I am attempting to show with this letter, the preponderance of scientific evidence is actually for such a conclusion, not against it.

"Do the results of modern science compel one to accept or reject that the complexity of modern life forms arose through a series of increasingly more complex organisms? There are two compelling reasons to conclude that this is not the case: First, there is a great dearth of fossil evidence of transitional species; that is, there is actually no evidence that evolution did occur."

There is actually a considerable wealth of evidence that evolution did occur. One example, which I cited above, is the common ancestries of different species. The pattern of morphological similarities (including, in recent years, strikingly solid biochemical evidence) implies that apparently disparate species, genera, families, orders, etc. all share common ancestors, with the ancestor the higher taxonomic levels being the ancestor of the ancestors of the lower taxonomic levels.

Second is the pattern of the fossil record as far as what forms appear at what geological times, which matches the pattern predicted by the cladistic methods shown in the preceding paragraphs.

Third is the existence of transitional forms. Creationists often point to a lack of transitional forms in the fossil record as evidence against evolution, but a problem lies in the definition of transitional forms. All creatures which have ever existed are adapted to their environment, or else they would not have survived according to the laws of natural selection. Thus natural selection does not allow for species which are only "partially" adapted for their environment, on their way to becoming "fully" or "perfectly" adapted. All species are "fully" adapted in that they are adapted enough to survive (which is not to be confused with some ideal of "perfect" adaptation), and therefore no "partially" adapted species, monsters stuck between "ideal" forms, will be found. What will be found are species which show only some of the derived characteristics of its descendants, and those often only partially. Thus Archaeopterix was transitional in that it possessed some fully developed derived characteristics of modern birds (such as flight feathers) and some partially developed derived characteristics (such as finger bones only partly fused), while lacking some derived characteristics of modern birds (such as a toothless bill). Archaeopterix was a transitional form only because its ancestors differed from it, not because it was "partially" adapted; because it was able to survive to be fossilized, we know that it was "fully" adapted, that is, adapted enough to survive. Transitional forms such as Archaeopterix are relatively common in the fossil record; they include a well-documented series of forms in the transition from reptiles to mammals. A non-exhaustive list of many more transitional forms found in the fossil record can be found on the Transitional Forms FAQ.

"Second, there is no known mechanism by which new species can arise from pre-existing forms; in other words, we don't know how it even could occur."

The primary mechanism is known; this mechanism, of course, is natural selection. That was Darwin's triumph: the postulation of a viable mechanism by which new species can arise from pre-existing forms, as he explains in the introduction to his _On the Origin of Species_. That this mechanism is sufficient to produce changes in species is, of course, not an issue; it has been shown in repeated studies, the most famous of which is the story of the peppered moths of England. That this mechanism, especially (but not necessarily, as documented cases show) when combined with geographic isolation, is sufficient to produce changes from one species to another is shown by empirical evidence, as well, as in the case of speciation of the finches on the Galapagos islands. The theoretical mechanisms of speciation are too sophisticated for me to describe in detail in this letter; but certainly those mechanisms exist.

"Doesn't the fossil record prove that complex life evolved from simpler forms? In fact it does not."

As I clarified above.

"When Darwin first proposed evolution as an explanation for the origin of the species--rather than the explanation for the tremendous variation within the species--"

Darwin first proposed *natural selection* as a *mechanism* for what we now call evolution. That species had evolved from other species, in the sense that we now use the word "evolve," had been proposed before Darwin's time (Lamarck is an example). Darwin recognized that none of these theories successfully explained adaptation, and his theory of natural selection was the only mechanism proposed that could explain all adaptation (not just evolution, or change).

". . . the fossil record was only beginning to be explored. At that time the fossil record showed that in the past many animals and plants had existed that had no modern representatives. There was a great confidence that as the fossil record was explored more fully, we would find a multitude of examples of animals that were neither amphibian nor reptile, but all manner of somethings in between; neither fish nor amphibian, but all manner of somethings in between."

Many of these fossils have been found; see the discussion of transitional forms above.

"And, in fact, if the species had originated by a slow accumulation of inherited, incremental changes in the organisms, then this is what we should have found. Instead, we have found only more of what we already see today: great numbers of variations on the same basic themes."

Both of these have been found. Transitional forms have been found, and so have variations on themes large and small, as predicted by a theory in which different groups share common ancestors.

"We may find fish that walked on their fins, but we don't find fish with legs, much less all of the thousands of intermediate forms that must have existed if reptiles did evolve from fish, each with improved survival traits relative to its antecedents. All of us have seen fossilized fish. You can buy one at the Nature store in the Galleria Mall for a few dollars. They are not rare. Where are all the fossils of the fibians? We should be finding more transitional forms than we find variations on existing forms! But those kinds of fossils just aren't there. Why can't you buy a fossilized fibian at the Galleria? The conclusion reached both by myself and by many modern evolutionists, including some of the most vocal opponents of the Bible's version of the origin of the species [1], is that the fossil record does not contain proof of this kind of evolution; instead, the almost total absence from the record of anything that can be construed to be a transitional form, actually disproves classical Darwinian evolution."

You did not mention the age of the fish fossils available at the mall; are they of the same age as "fibians," or are they more recent? Recent fossils are more common. Throughout the fossil record (from beginning to end), there are many more species of fish (a group which actually includes at least three phyla, obviously not all ancestral to terrestrial vertebrates) than of "fibians," whose descendants all have additional characteristics that define them as amphibians or as amniotes.

"But the absence of transitional forms in the fossil record is not, in my mind, the greatest argument against Darwinian evolution. The greatest argument is the absence of any known mechanism by which evolution could occur."

This absence, as I am trying to show, is non-existent.

"When Darwin wrote his famous treatise, it was widely believed that acquired traits of the parents were inherited by the children; thus, a blacksmith's children would be born with greater muscle mass. This was Lamarck's explanation for the evolution of the giraffe, and it fit beautifully with Darwinian evolution in providing a mechanism by which beneficial changes could accumulate until they produced a new species: [explanation cut]"

Actually, Lamarck's mechanism is contrary to Darwin's mechanism. Lamarck's mechanism includes four laws:

1. Life, by its own force, tends continually to increase the volume of every living body and to extend the dimensions of its parts, up to a limit which it imposes.
2. The production of a new organ in an animal body results from a new need which continues to make itself felt, and from a new movement that this need brings about and maintains.
3. The development and effectiveness of organs are proportional to the use of those organs.
4. Everything acquired or changed during an individuals lifetime is preserved by heredity and transmitted to that individual's progeny.

The greatest weakness of Darwinism, as it stood in the 1850s, was that no good mechanism for heredity was known. This mechanism was provided when Mendel's laws were rediscovered in the early 20th century, and the two theories were synthesized into what is known variably as the New Synthesis, the Modern Synthesis, and Neo-Darwinism.

"But when Mendel discovered the gene, and developed his laws of inherited traits, Darwinism was temporarily in turmoil. It was saved from this turmoil by the discovery, in the early 20th century, of mutations. Mutations temporarily provided the mechanism by which change was introduced into the form of the parent. The problem was that mutations are random changes, not necessarily advantageous to the organism; hence, progress could only occur through making many attempts, most of which would be failures."

Most would be failures, but the failures would not survive beyond a generation. The few successes would be preserved for all future generations. This concept is like picking up whole seashells on a beach on which most of are broken. If every broken one is thrown away but the rare whole one is kept, then eventually the collector will have accumulated several whole shells while retaining no broken ones. This is another crucial point of Darwin's theory: that selection is cumulative.

"The death knell for this explanation actually occurred when the genetic code was broken. The structure of the gene, when interpreted in light of modern information theory, makes clear that the possibility of an accumulation of random mutations explaining the origin of the species is so remote as to be implausible. Imagine an electronic version of Shakespeare's Hamlet, composed of 1s and 0s stored on a floppy disk; bring into the picture the word processing program, residing in the computer's CPU. The DNA of the fertilized egg is like the code for Hamlet, and the word processing program is like the womb of the mother. Now imagine a gamma ray changing one or more of these 1s or 0s into a different state. What are the chances that this would improve Hamlet? Indeed, what are the chances that the change would even make sense, rather than just crashing the program? And what are the chances that an entirely new masterpiece of literature would result from millions of years of students preferring to read each generation of improved versions of Hamlet? The idea is ludicrous in the extreme."

What is ludicrous is the argument, not the idea behind it. In a clever strategy, it uses literature which is assumed to be "perfect" as an example, so an improvement is impossible. But what about an article in the Oklahoma Daily? These often contain small errors in typography or grammar that do not diminish the effectiveness of the article (by analogy, it is "adapted" well enough to do its job). Random changes will almost always make the article worse -- but just the right random change will correct that missing quotation mark or delete that repeated paragraph. And if the "bad" random changes are thrown out and the "good" ones are kept, then the newspaper will be improved. This method is extremely inefficient, yet given sufficient time, and a mechanism for sorting the good from the bad (natural selection in Darwin's scheme), it is effective, efficient or not.

"But what is the information required to code for the human eye? Or even the cornea or the retina by themselves? How about the optic nerve or the portion of the brain required to make sense of the electrical signals? Yet how could any of this "information" profit the new organism without the rest of the "information" being present?"

Actually, these parts are not coded separately; the development of each affects the development of the rest, so that if one is absent none will develop. Thus the parts evolved together, not one at a time. Also, a gradual series of stages, all adaptive in themselves, for the development of the eye can be postulated; and if that is done, then there can be no argument that the eye is too complex to develop on its own, since at least one possible pathway for it to develop has been postulated. See Richard Dawkins' book The Blind Watchmaker for a description of a possible pathway.

"But if there is no imaginable pathway by which random changes in the chemical coding of the genes could produce survival enhancements,"

Actually, there is an imaginable pathway; see above.

". . . what do we have left as an explanation for the mechanism by which changes accumulate in a sequence of organisms until a new species eventually emerges? In fact, we have no explanation, only wishful thinking that there may exist some kind of master genes that can trigger sudden changes in the organisms offspring. And even if these master genes were to exist, by what miracle might they have been created?"

Master genes, or homeobox genes, do exist, but there is no reason why their existence is necessary for mutations to take place. In fact, evolution cannot take place in large jumps, only in gradual steps. Otherwise, the "hopeful monster" would be created, with no likewise grossly mutated compatriots to mate with. To be effective in evolution, mutations must be small enough to allow mutants to continue to mate with other members of the species.

"In point of fact, most people who know the fossil record think that while it doesn't contain the transitional forms to prove evolution, the proof is to be found in biology, while those who know that biology has no proof assume that the proof is found in the fossil record. The truth, however, is that neither can provide proof for evolution as the explanation for the origin of the species."

This is not true, as I hope I have demonstrated in the above paragraphs.

"Actually, the greatest argument in favor of the Theory of Evolution is that it appears that everybody but a few idiots believes it! If the proof is really as shaky as I have presented it, how do we explain the apparent consensus regarding its validity, especially among the scientific community? I believe the answer is to be found in the "Emperor's New Clothes" syndrome. Remember the story of the ancient charlatan who convinced the king and his advisors that he could make clothing so marvelous that only those with a perfect moral character could see them? When the clothing was "presented" and neither the king nor his advisors could see them, everyone was afraid to be the first to say that there was, in fact, nothing there, for fear of being found out to be only one with a blemished moral character. There are very few among us who dare risk the ostracism of our peers; this is especially true of those who aspire to acceptance into the academic community. Who is willing to dare risk the dismissal of their credentials as an intellectual by admitting that it appears to them that there is, in fact, no scientific evidence to support the validity of the Theory of Evolution? There are very few."

As a defense, I would like to point out that scientists seem to take great pleasure in tearing each other down. If there were any logical grounds to do it, then scientists would jump at the chance to tear down the modern theory of evolution and get their name in the history books as well as in the scientific journals. But there is not solid logical backing for tearing down the theory, which has stood the test of time for about 140 years (since Darwin first published his famous abstract). In fact, I am inclined to believe that it is the Creationists who suffer from the "Emperor's New Clothes" phenomenon. I have to be very cautious in which fellow Christians I tell my views on evolution to. It's like saying, "The emperor has no clothes," except that often the little boy who calls the bluff gets mobbed instead of accoladed for seeing the truth. Unfortunately, despite the ideals of Christianity, many Christians are judgmental and quick to condemn.

"Let me conclude by encouraging you to read Ken Stephenson's answer to the FAQ on evolution if you haven't already read it. You may choose not to become a Christian. But if this is your choice, don't make it because you are afraid of being branded an anti-intellectual. And don't cloak your choice in any kind of intellectual superiority to those who are Christians. Today, it is those who disbelieve the scientific establishment's Doctrine of Evolution who are the descendants of Kepler, Galileo, and Boltzmann."

Again, this is ironic, because I compare the modern theory of evolution to Copernicus, Galileo, and Kepler's ideas on planetary motion. Galileo was challenged by religious leaders, just as Darwin is today, but both theories are standing the test of time.

"1. 'Since we proposed punctuated equilibria to explain trends, it is infuriating to be quoted again and again by creationists--whether through design or stupidity, I do not know--as admitting that the fossil record includes no transitional forms. Transitional forms are generally lacking at the species level, but they are abundant between larger groups.' Stephen Jay Gould, 'Evolution as Fact and Theory. Hen's Teeth and Horse's Toes,' 1983, Norton, New York."

It is ironic that when you quoted Steven Jay Gould out of context, you chose a quote in which he is railing against Creationists who quote him out of context. Gould is discussing the theory of punctuated equilibrium, which he and Niles Eldredge first proposed in the 1970s. This quote does not even support your premise, that there are no transitional forms between large groups (such as fish and amphibians), for in it Gould says, "Transitional forms . . . are abundant between larger groups." What Gould is explaining is why fossils of forms between very small groups (i.e. species) are rare compared to transitional forms between larger groups. The theory of punctuated equilibrium (one of the mechanisms of speciation refered to above), in a nutshell, states that speciation events usually happen quickly, over geological instants of only thousands of years, in small isolated populations -- a set of circumstances that would result in transitional forms between species being very rare, a prediction which is borne out by the fossil record.

Thank you for bearing with me in this letter, especially since I have treated you, probably unfairly, as an academic equal rather than as a superior. I hope that you will consider some of the ideas I have mentioned in this letter.

Sincerely,
Robyn Conder

© 1997, 1998 by Robyn Conder Broyles. All rights reserved.

E-mail comments to Robyn Conder Broyles at ginkgo100@yahoo.com