Darwin’s Delusion – Part One

The Living Land

The rocks of the earth that form the platform of our lives are the result of a living process. The actions of wind, rain and tide have sculpted these geological strata which we have come to know as the land we live on.

Volcanic lava, drawn from deep within the molten core of the earth, has flowed upon the land and beneath the sea and hardened into layers of igneous rock. These layers of stone, together with other organic materials, have been fashioned by the forces of nature into tiny weathered particles which have become the soil.

As new layers of material have been deposited, so the underlying portions have been compacted into sedimentary rock, which have then borne testimony to that age of time in which these processes took place. Because rocks have been formed by the constant interplay of natural forces, they have interacted with those forms of organic life that have shared their stage.

In selected places, and under suitable conditions, skeletal remains of species that were once alive have come to be entombed in sediment, and these bones have come to be preserved in rocks in the form of fossilised remains. The rocks of ages past are thus an outdoor museum that provides us with a record of those earlier forms of life, which are now enshrined in time.

The oldest rocks that have formed on the earth have been dated by radioactive methods to an age of about four billion years. Close examination of these rocks has so far failed to reveal the presence of any fossilised forms.

Investigation of more recent rocks, however, has provided evidence of organic life, in layers of increasing complexity. The earliest forms of life that have been found preserved in stone consist of examples of algae and primitive aquatic plants which have been dated to a period of about 2.6 billion years ago.

Almost two billion years then elapsed before the fossilised remains of various forms of marine life began to appear in the sedimentary strata of those times. This Paleozoic era of geologic time was dominated by the presence of particular anthropods called trilobites, an extinct form of marine shellfish.

About one hundred million years later, fossilised evidence of the first fishes appeared that were characterised by the presence of backbones.

Around 400 million years ago there appeared indications of amphibious creatures that lived partly in the sea, but which also roamed the fringes of the land. After the span of almost another hundred million years, signs of land-based reptiles began to be found.

The dawn of the Mesozoic era of earth, around two hundred and thirty million years ago, heralded the presence of the world’s first dinosaurs, cold-blooded creatures which grew to enormous size. Some fifty million years later evidence of the first birds appeared.

Finally, with the arrival of the Cenozoic era some sixty-three million years ago, fossilised remains of warm-blooded mammals were found. These mammals occurred in groups of increasing complexity in a sequence which culminated, around three million years ago, in the appearance of an ape-like creature that was able to walk upon its hind legs.

The Origins of Life

This was the precursor of man, the homo sapiens of today. This record of the emergence of organic life, now preserved in stone in forms of increasing complexity, is evidence of the evolutionary course of life, progressing from simple single-celled amoebae to the complex sophistication of the human body.

Under the influence of the Christian Church, and guided particularly by the writings of the Old Testament, early scientists believed that each species was a separate creation of God. The human being was taken to be the crowning glory of this sequence of creation, and the highest form of expression which life could take.

The idea that the incredible diversity of form might actually be the result of a unitary process of nature which led directly from the simple to the complex, was first presented in 1859 by Charles Darwin, in his book The Origin of Species.

In this epic work, the naturalist set out the findings of almost four decades of patient fieldwork, drawn from every continent of the world. It was based not only on those forms of life which then existed, but also on those which had long since become extinct, but whose historical existence was revealed by their fossilised remains.

Darwin’s great insight and discovery, and which caused him to be placed in the company of such scientific giants as Copernicus and Newton, was that certain differences existed between individual members of a species, and that these differences could be transmitted to their offspring.

It was this process of transmission, Darwin claimed, which ultimately accounted for the enormous variety of speciation on the earth. Thus different forms of life were not created separately by God, as the Church had long believed, but were all inextricably related to each other.

Not only were these different species interlinked, said Darwin, but each species actually changed into one another, in a gradation of forms that proceeded from the simple to the complex.

The process of evolution was therefore revealed by Darwin to be a natural and sequential process, rather than a truncated process of separate divine creations, which had been the teaching of the Church.

Darwin’s Unique Theory

The sophisticated forms of life had developed over enormous periods of geologic time from simple origins. In fact all life, Darwin argued, must ultimately have evolved from one single ancestral form, as he wrote in the first edition of his book.

“Therefore I should infer from analogy that probably all the organic beings which have ever lived on this earth have descended from some one primordial form, into which life was first breathed by the Creator.” 1

However, it is worth noting here that in subsequent editions of this book, the reference to “the Creator” in the above sentence was deleted, no doubt at the behest of supporters of the new paradigm, in order to sever completely any link between Science and the Church.

Darwin called the process whereby one form changed into another “natural selection”. He later attributed the inspiration for this idea to the works of the nineteenth century British economist Thomas Malthus, who had argued that the growth in human population was continually held in check by the limiting forces of famine, disease and war.

It was Malthus who conveyed to Darwin the idea that life was a continuing struggle in which only those who were best equipped to counter this struggle would be able to survive. It was the struggle for survival that was the key to Darwin’s principle of natural selection.

“As many more individuals of each species are born than can possibly survive; and as, consequently, there is a frequently recurring struggle for existence, it follows that any being, if it vary however slightly in any manner profitable to itself, under the complex and sometimes varying conditions of life, will have a better chance of surviving, and thus be naturally selected. From the strong principle of inheritance, any selected variety will tend to propagate its new and modified form.”  (Original italics underlined)  2

Darwin explained that through this process of natural selection, the individual differences possessed by those members of a species who succeeded in winning the battle for survival, would be passed on to succeeding generations. These differences would lead in time to modifications in structure which subsequently produced entirely new species of creatures.

“Whatever the cause may be of each slight difference in the offspring from their parents – and a cause for each must exist – it is steady accumulation, through natural selection, of such differences, when beneficial to the individual, that gives rise to all the more important modifications of structure, by which the innumerable beings on the face of this earth are enabled to struggle with each other, and the best adapted to survive.”  3

The ability to survive was the crucial factor in evolution, and this depended on the ability of parents to pass on their beneficial differences to their progeny. Those species which were unable to meet this challenge were doomed to extinction.

It was central to Darwin’s theory of evolution that the process of change from one species to another took place as a result of innumerable tiny changes, or modifications in form, over an immense span of time. As he frequently pointed out in Species, ‘natura non facit saltum’, (nature does not make leaps).

Although his friend and ardent supporter Thomas Huxley cautioned him about binding his theory to this precept, Darwin was adamant that all change in form was due to an infinite sequence of small changes.

Darwin was well aware of the fact that selective breeding, particularly among domestic animals, was capable of producing remarkable variations in size and character, and he devoted the opening chapter of his book to an evaluation of this data.

What the precise mechanism of this transfer between different generations was, Darwin was unable to say. He could only point to the undeniable results.

Gregor Mendel

It was only many years later that the discoveries of Gregor Mendel revealed the mechanism of hereditary transfer. Mendel found that there were certain distinct hereditary units, which he called “factors”, which were responsible for transferring particular characteristics from parent to child.

We refer to these factors today as genes. Although Mendel believed that each factor was responsible for a particular characteristic, such as the shape of the nose or the colour of the eyes, we now know that genes function in far more complex ways.

Genes are not only able to work independently, but they also work in unison with other genes. They may also lie dormant for long periods, and only function when triggered by some unusual occurrence.

The amount of genetic material available to any individual is enormous. This “bank” of genetic material grows mainly by reproduction, by allowing the genes of one creature in any particular species, to mix with those of another.

Darwin’s theory of natural selection has now been superseded by the findings of molecular biology, in which the structures of biological systems are seen to be the result of their molecular constituents. These constituents are ultimately determined by their particular configuration of genes.

All organic life is composed of cells, which constantly renew themselves. These cells duplicate themselves according to certain genetic instructions which are coded into the nucleus of each cell.

This genetic code is the blueprint for each cell, which then continues to replicate itself exactly, for as long as the genetic code remains intact. This genetic code is determined by molecular strands of the substance DNA, the nucleic acid which is responsible for establishing the precise pattern of genes within each cell.

If every cell continued to reproduce itself in an identical fashion without any variation, there could be no life on earth as we know it today.

The fact that we exist, and are surrounded by such a vast array of other forms, is due to the fact that cells do not always reproduce themselves in the same way. The patterns of genes change.

Why and how these patterns change forms the basis of the science of genetics. It has been found that genetic codes change for a variety of reasons. The chain of nucleic acid molecules may become damaged by some alien interference such as cosmic radiation or some other form of chemical intrusion.

Most changes, however, are derived from the mixing of genes through reproduction. During reproduction the genetic code of the father is combined with that of the mother, allowing the resulting child to inherit its genetic code equally from both parents.

This genetic bond produces a child which, although similar in most respects to its parents, is nevertheless unique. Its particular arrangement of genes is characteristic of itself alone, and except for the case of identical siblings formed out of the same originating cell, is never again repeated. Each offspring of any species therefore represents a unique genetic pattern.

Darwin’s initial theory of evolution has thus been refined by the science of genetics, which has been able to explain why these physical differences arise, and the process whereby these changes are transferred from one generation to another.

Neo-Darwinism

In its modified form (Neo-Darwinism), the theory of evolution has come to be acclaimed as one of the triumphs of modern science, and perhaps one of the most complete scientific theories that has ever been conceived.

For a large number of scientists today, the theory of evolution is taken to be an established fact of nature, an acknowledged principle that is beyond any further need of proof.

There is, however, one disturbing problem. In recent years this monolith of thought has begun to reveal some alarming cracks. So alarming have these cracks become in fact, that to an increasing number of biologists, belief in the long accepted doctrine of Darwinian evolution can no longer be sustained.

The first of these difficulties resides in a problem which Darwin himself recognised, and which he succinctly summarised in his chapter entitled “Difficulties of Theory.”

“Firstly, why, if species have descended from other species by insensibly fine gradations, do we not everywhere see innumerable transitional forms? But, as by this theory innumerable transitional forms must have existed, why do we not find them embedded in countless numbers in the crust of the earth?”  4

Since Darwin announced that one species evolved into another species by means of an infinite sequence of tiny changes in form, all that was needed to prove Darwin’s theory was to examine the fossil record and find the skeletal remains of these transitional forms.

The problem that confronted Darwin at that time, was that the physical evidence of these transitional forms could not be found. The paleontological record of these changes was just not there. Darwin was unable to find any fossil record showing precisely how one distinct species changed into another distinct species by means of “insensibly fine gradations”.

Darwin’s answer to this problem was to point out that the geological record was imperfect. Not only, he argued, was it extremely difficult to find any area on earth where the geological record of every age was preserved in a neat sequential fashion, where layer upon layer could be clearly seen, but the process of fossilisation itself required suitable conditions which did not always occur.

It was because of these gaps in the geological record, claimed Darwin, that the complete sequence of fossils could not be found. He expressed every confidence, however, that as the science of paleontology advanced, and as the geological record became more complete, so the fossilised evidence of these transitional forms would undoubtedly be found.

It is interesting to note in passing that, for a man whose entire thesis was founded upon the basis of uniformitarianism – the doctrine that geological processes are always due to forces that operate continuously and uniformly – Darwin showed a cavalier disregard for the physical evidence provided by the geological record.

Although it was abundantly clear to Darwin that the rocks of earth showed every sign of cataclysmic disruption in ages past, (a point which he specifically mentioned in his Journal of Researches), and that a neatly layered progression of geological strata was almost nowhere to be found on earth, this conflicting data apparently did nothing to shake his uniformitarian belief.

(To be continued in Part Two)

References

1  Charles Darwin, “On the Origin of Species“, Oxford University Press, London, 1902, p. 436.
2  Ibid, p. 4.
3  Ibid, p. 153.
4  Ibid, p. 154-155.

This entry was posted on Thursday, April 10th, 2014 at 1:58 pm and is filed under Darwin's Delusion. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Comments and pings are closed.