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The
Atheist Devotional: Timeless Meditations for
the Godless by M. Moore
Copyright ă 2008 M. Previous: Reading Number 13: Dawkins: Faith and Miracles, Scientific-Style
-Reading Number Fourteen -
Dawkins Continued: Lions and Tigers and Gaps, Oh My!
Excerpted from: Dawkins, The Blind Watchmaker, Chapter 9*
Gaps or no gaps? Do snakes all have the same number of vertebrae or different numbers? It doesn’t matter. We can always fit the data into our theory of evolution somehow. It’s nice and vague that way.
“The starting point for discussing these matters is the apparent existence of 'gaps' in the fossil record, and it is to these gaps that we now turn.”
“Gaps” might be rather troubling for the evolutionist, but since Dawkins says they’re only “apparent” and puts “gaps” in quotes, they must not be such a big deal. Whew. That’s a relief!
“...the Cambrian strata of rocks, vintage about 600 million years, are the oldest ones in which we find most of the major invertebrate groups. And we find many of them already in an advanced state of evolution, the very first time they appear. It is as though they were just planted there, without any evolutionary history.”
Whoa. If I didn't know better (from Dawkins talking about “the apparent existence of ’gaps’”), I’d say that was a real gap!
“Needless to say, this appearance of sudden planting has delighted creationists. Evolutionists of all stripes believe, however, that this really does represent a very large gap in the fossil record, a gap that is simply due to the fact that, for some reason, very few fossils have lasted from periods before about 600 million years ago.”
Well, what do you know? A real gap! I’m stunned. Well, we just have to keep the faith. “Believe” that there was evolution before that, even though we don’t see it because of the gap.
“...when we are talking about gaps of this magnitude, there is no difference whatever in the interpretations of 'punctuationists' and 'gradualists' [two groups of evolutionists]. Both schools of thought despise so-called scientific creationists equally, and both agree that the major gaps are real, that they are true imperfections in the fossil record. Both schools of thought agree that the only alternative explanation of the sudden appearance of so many complex animal types in the Cambrian era is divine creation, and both would reject this alternative.”
Do you detect a visceral repugnance on the part of evolutionists for the “despised” idea of creation? Well, of course. We godless sorts hate the very idea of creation. (And if you rule it out from the start, it makes proving evolution so much easier. After all, evolution is the best non-creationist alternative we have!) Yep, we’ll believe anything rather than creation, no matter how improbable:
“...to make an eye from nothing you need not just one improvement but a large number of improvements. Any one of these improvements is pretty improbable by itself, but not so improbable as to be impossible.”
Well, okay. As long as something is not impossible, I’m ready to believe it, without worrying about how improbable it actually is.
“...The coincidence of their simultaneous occurrence [.i.e. the simultaneous occurrence of all the changes needed to make an eye] is ...so improbable as to be, to all intents and purposes, impossible.”
But still not actually impossible... Hmm, I guess the point here is that you can always find it easier to believe in something improbable if you compare it with something that’s even more improbable! Let’s look at a couple more inspiring examples of how all things are possible with evolution:
“...Snakes...all have many more vertebrae than their ancestors. We could be sure of this even if we didn't have any fossils, because snakes have many more vertebrae than their surviving relatives. Moreover, different species of snakes have different numbers of vertebrae, which means that vertebral number must have changed in evolution since their common ancestor, and quite often at that.”
Of course, if snakes all had the same number of vertebrae, that would be evidence that they all descended from a common ancestor. But if they have different numbers, that just shows how easily evolution can make changes. Evolution wins either way. Neat, huh? Also, look at Dawkins’ first two sentences. How could we be so “sure” that the common ancestor of snakes and their “relatives” was not snakelike? Because there are more of the non-snakelike descendents today? But who says a branch of non-snakelike critters might not have descended from a snake-like ancestor and just happened to be more prolific in terms of numbers of species than the snake-like descendents? Evolution can do anything, you know. Dawkins seems a little weak in his faith here (not to mention his logic).
“...It is easy to believe that individual snakes with half a dozen more vertebrae than their parents could have arisen in a single mutational step.”
Yes, we evolutionists are very good at believing things!
“...lions and tigers are now members of different species, but they have both sprung from a single ancestral species, probably not very long ago. This ancestral species may have been the same as one of the two modem species; or it may have been a third modem species, or maybe it is now extinct.”
Oh good. Looks like Dawkins has regained his faith in the limitless and fluid possibilities of evolution. Does it seem suspicious that we just assume with no proof that there are no limits to what evolution can do? Well, it shouldn’t. It’s all based on faith, you know. And our faith in the powers of evolution is unquestioning and absolute.
* “Excerpts” are paraphrased, except for “words in quotation marks and italics,” which are direct quotations from the excerpted work.
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