BIOLOGICAL EVOLUTION

Creationists often point to the second law of thermodynamics as proof that biological evolution is impossible.  I wish I could agree with them.  However, the logic that applies to molecular evolution cannot extend to biological evolutio--at least not directly.  It was seen earlier that where no complexity exists, no conduit for directing energy in an ordered fashion, that energy by itself cannot produce order.  However, we noted that not only can man's brain produce order (a space shuttle), it can produce other machines that produce order (an air conditioner) -- albeit at the expense of order and the increase of entropy somewhere else in the universe where the energy was produced.  In other words, once a living organism, of complexity (such as the human race) has come into existence, that complex living entity has within its power the ability to meaningfully channel energy and produce additional ordered systems.  The order produced, or course, may never exceed the disorder or entropy produced by the burning of peanut butter sandwiches which the designer ate.  But while order can never be "created," it can effectively be redistributed.

As man, with the order of his mind, and the fuel of a sandwich, can produce, or redistribute further order, so can other animals.  A classic example of natural selection is a predator running after his prey.  When a lion chases a herd of cape buffalo, the slowest and weakest will be caught and eaten.  In that a lion is capable of segregating slow and fast moving cape buffalo, he is the jungle's answer to "Maxwell's demon."  (I'm sure the cape buffalo would agree.)  He chases the herd, and segregates the slower from the faster.  The synchronism of energy and a complex engine make this possible.  Our lion is a living being of profound complexity, designed to hunt down the slowest animal in the heard.  And he burns energy to power his complex task.  Accordingly, once one gets beyond the chemical to the biological level, the process of random genetic mutation and natural selection (the theory of evolution) does not technically violate the second law of thermodynamics, at least not per se.  Mechanical attempts to apply the second law of thermodynamics on the biological level are therefore not entirely valid.

Now whether the lion's hunting of the cape buffalo is capable of producing new species of increasing complexity, however, is another matter entirely.  Accordingly, though biological evolution does not violate the second law of thermodynamics in the same way as molecular / pre-biological evolution violates this law, we shall see that many of the same principles of statistical probability still apply to biological evolution.

Saltationism and incrementalism

In our example of the split leaf plant, we acknowledged that there is no "striving" for some particular state of order.  Rather, genetic mutations are said to be random.  In theory, genetic mutations come in a spectrum, from the small scale to the large scale.  Returning to our bucket of lukewarm water as a model of statistical analysis, we noted that the probability of all the fast molecules moving to the right side of the bucket at the same time was very remote -- one chance in 2 raised to the 6.02 x 10²³ power.  We saw, on the other hand, that it was relatively easy for a single fast moving molecule to stumble into the right hand side of the bucket -- one chance in two to be exact.  It may not be as dramatic a jump, but it does not require the same leap of faith as the entire bucket segregating itself into fast and slow molecules.  Little by little, Maxwell's demon, if he were sufficiently complex to perform the task, and fueled by sufficient energy, could trap the fast moving molecules, one at a time, as they wandered near our trap door.  And he would not have to stretch the laws of probability to do it.  So it is with evolution.  A design of extreme complexity may arise spontaneously in one shot, or little by little.  These positions essentially reflect the two camps within evolutionism today.  Saltationists are those who believe evolution occurs in large jumps.  Incrementalists are those who believe it occurred little by little.

Saltationism 

Stephen  J. Gould and Niles Eldridge are advocates of a form of saltationism known as "punctuated equilibrium."^[1] 

This is an ad hoc reformulation of the theory of evolution, the sort of reformulation that marks a moribund theory in decline.  Recall the words of Lakatos and Zahar:

It is always easy for a scientist to deal with a given anomaly by making suitable adjustments to his program (e.g. by adding a new epicycle).  Such manoeuvres are ad hoc, and the program is degenerating, unless they not only explain the given facts they were intended to explain but also predict some new facts as well.^[2]

The reformulation was necessitated by the fossil record.  As originally articulated, the theory of evolution was one of incrementalism.  This necessarily involved, as Darwin admitted, an almost infinite number of transitional forms.  "The number of intermediate and transitional links, between all living and extinct species, must have been inconceivably great."^[3]

This, the most fundamental prediction of the evolutionary theory, however, was falsified by the progressive discovery of the fossil record, which Darwin recognized was "the most obvious and gravest objection which can be urged against my theory."^[4]

Evolutionists who had hoped that subsequent archaeological discoveries might ameliorate this embarrassing shortcoming have been sorely disappointed.  This frustration was echoed more recently by George T. Neville, Professor of Geology at the University of Glasgow.

Granted an evolutionary origin of the main groups of animals, and not an act of special creation, the absence of any record whatsoever of a single member of any of the phyla in the Pre-Cambrian rocks remains as inexplicable on orthodox grounds as it was to Darwin.^[5]

As of 1987, the situation still remained unchanged as Richard Dawkins writes:

". . . the Cambrian strata of rocks, vintage about 600 million years, are the oldest 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.  Needless to say, this appearance of sudden planting has delighted creationists."^[6]

Lest the reader assume that the Cambrian period was carefully chosen by this author as the one embarrassment to evolutionary scientists, it must be explained that it was generally in the Cambrian period that complex life forms appeared.  Little occurred prior to, or subsequent to this period.

. . . . the Precambrian fossil record is a little more. . . than 2.5 billion years of bacteria and blue-green algae.  Complex life did arise with startling speed near the base of the Cambrian.

. . .  things have remained pretty quiet since the Cambrian -- and so they are likely to remain.^[7]

In response to this grim reality, one of the faithful among evolution's ranks might suggest that the fossil record is in its infancy, and a vast discovery of transitional forms remains likely.  Against such speculation, George Neville assures us that "There is no need to apologize any longer for the poverty of the fossil record.  In some ways it has become almost unmanageably rich, and discovery is outpacing integration. . . [but] the fossil record nevertheless continues to be composed mainly of gaps."^[8] 

The situation facing evolutionary scientists was grim indeed.  In the only period in which most complex life forms appear to have originated, there is a full and rich fossil record, and yet the transitional forms predicted by the evolutionary theory are still missing.  The faithful are kept in the dark through the helpful work of the media.  Pick up a newspaper or go to a museum, and one is sure to hear about Archaeopteryx as an example of transitional forms.  The reality is, it not one of thousands of such examples, it is one of the few alleged "transitional forms" ever found.  Moreover, the evidence for calling it a transitional form at all is more than a little tenuous.^[9] 

Although the assurances by the media were generally sufficient to assuage any lingering doubts among the faithful, the priesthood of evolution had known all along the truth about the lack of transitional forms.  For some, such as Gould and Eldridge, the strain was more than they could bear.

First came the confession of sins.  Eldredge wrote: 

"It is, indeed, a very curious state of affairs, I think, that paleontologists have been insisting that their record is consistent with slow, steady, gradual evolution where I think that privately, they've known for over a hundred years that such is not the case. . . It's the only reason why they can correlate rocks with their fossils, for instance. . . they've ignored the question completely."^[10]

Then like rats jumping off a sinking ship, they abandoned the traditional theory of evolution and reformulated the theory of evolution to conform to the fossil record.  Things had not evolved by an infinite number of transitional steps, but by leaps and bounds!  The new theory would be known as 'punctuated equilibrium.'  These jumps (or saltations) however have nothing in common with the original Darwinian theory of evolution except for the general agreement that it occurred without divine intervention.  Johnson writes:  "In a word, (Darwin's word), a saltation is equivalent to a miracle. At the extreme, saltationism is virtually indistinguishable from special creation.  If a snakes egg were to hatch and a mouse emerge, we could with equal justice classify the event as an instance of evolution or creation."^[11] 

In essence, the only feature that a saltation theory of evolution has in common with incremental darwinism is that there is no God.  This then is not a scientific theory, it is a religion.

Recall our bucket of lukewarm water.  It can either be separated incrementally (molecule by molecule through the kind intervention of Maxwell's demon or some other complex device), or it can occur spontaneously.  But for all the fast (hot) water molecules to spontaneously move to the right hand side of the bucket is a mathematical absurdity.  Few persons indeed sit in dread of a room suddenly having all the air molecules shift to one side of the room, leaving our hapless victim to suffocate in a vacuum.  Yet a saltation is roughly on this level of mathematical absurdity.  Consider the genetic damage done by radiation exposure at Chernobyl.  The changes were minuscule, perhaps a single base pair in a DNA molecule.  Yet they produced a cancers that killed the unfortunate victims.  Let's assume that the odds are one in one hundred thousand that such a random mutation is beneficial.  (Given the number of persons who suffer from skin cancer due to exposure to the sun, radiation, etc., with no known examples of genetic improvement, it is reasonable to say that one in a hundred thousand is generous.)  The odds then of two such fortuitous mutations occurring simultaneously is one chance in 100,000²; three simultaneous mutations would be one in 100,000³; and so forth.  Let us also assume that the genetic mutation producing the cancer was so small that one million changes of equal magnitude are necessary to go from a reptile to a bird.  The probability then, of performing this event in one jump, is one in 100,000^1,000,000.  Anyone who thinks this has happened in the history of this planet let alone happened millions of times to account for the diversity of life on this planet, is utterly bereft of the smallest vestige of mathematical acumen.  Nevertheless, some evolutionists have suggested this very example!^[12] 

Because saltationism is mathematically absurd, one seldom or never sees physicists, or scientists from other highly mathematical disciplines looking to the theory of 'punctuated equilibrium.'  To them, the theory of punctuated equilibrium is little more than sojourning in cloud land, a mathematical absurdity.  Paleontologists on the other hand are more concerned with developing an operative theory to explain the fossil record.  The theory of punctuated equilibrium does satisfy the gaps in the fossil record.  Nevertheless, the mathematical unreasonableness of saltationism is somewhat intuitive to anyone who has ever tinkered with factorials or exponents.  "Gould and Eldredge understand that, and so despite hints of saltationism (particularly by Gould), they have always kept open their lines of retreat to orthodox Darwinian gradualism."^[13]

Incrementalism or gradualism

Because the mathematics of saltationism is so absurd, little more need be said to discredit it.  In this author's opinion, it does not merit further refutation.  The only way evolution could have rationally occurred was by the classic form of Darwinism -- random genetic mutations, natural selection, and vast amounts of time -- otherwise known as incrementalism or gradualism.  Darwin himself concurred. "If it could be demonstrated that any complex organ existed which could not possibly have been formed by numerous, successive, slight modifications, my theory would absolutely break down."  (Cited by Johnson, Darwin on Trial, p. 36)

The first weakness of Darwin's theory has already been discussed.  It simply does not comport to the fossil record.  Yet, as Pierre Grass%uFFFDformer Chair of Evolution at the University of Paris-Sorbonne reminds us, the only place that actual empirical evidence of evolution can be found is in the fossil record.^[14] 

When the empirical data fails to conform to the one central prediction made by a theory, the theory has been falsified.  This of course does not mean the theory is wrong.  It can be reformulated or adjusted.  But, as Latakos and Zahar remind us, until ad hoc reformulations of a theory demonstrate their value by making bold predictions, they are meaningless drivel.  The theory is in decay and moribund.  But the only reformulation of the evolutionary theory that constitutes a significant departure from classic Darwinism has been 'punctuated equilibrium.'  As we have already seen, it has made no predictions, and stands as a mathematical absurdity.  An honest application of the scientific method therefore affords little encouragement to the theory of evolution.  It has been weighed in the balances and found wanting.

It must be parenthetically observed at this point, that at least one form of creationism has been confirmed by the fossil record.  The creation theory of the Judaeo-Christian tradition portrays the Creator creating animals "according to their kind."  (Genesis 1:20-25).  The fossil record confirms this in two ways.  First, as we have seen, the gaps do not reveal a continuous spectrum of animals, but separate "kinds" of animals.  The second confirmation is stasis.  Animals are seen to reproduce "after their own kind."

. . . stasis the consistent absence of fundamental directional change is positively documented.  It is also the norm and not the exception.  According to Steven Stanley, the Bighorn Basin in Wyoming contains a continuous local record of fossil deposits for about five million years, during an early period in the age of mammals.  Because this record is so complete, paleontologists assumed that certain populations of the basin could be linked together to illustrate continuous evolution.  On the contrary, species that were once thought to have turned into others turn out to overlap in time with their alleged descendants, and 'the fossil record does not convincingly document a single transition from one species to another.'  In addition, species remain fundamentally unchanged for an average of more than one million years before disappearing from the record.^[15]

And there is yet further corroboration.  The creation account of the Book of Genesis presents a certain order for the creation of plants and animals.  It conforms exactly to the fossil record.  In originally observing this correlation, Peter Stoner, former Chairman of the Department of Mathematics and Astronomy at Pasadena City College calculated the probability that the Bible could have accurately sequenced these events by random chance.  The probability turns out to be one chance in 311,351,040, better than one chance in three hundred million!^[16] 

This is not to say whether schools should or should not be teaching biblical creationism.  Creation science transcends any one religion, and is simply the belief that an intelligent Creator is responsible for the universe and the life in it.  Any scientific evidence whether favoring creationism or evolution -- should be important to any real scientist who is simply seeking the truth.  The point is simply that the one great piece of empirical evidence for earth's past, the fossil record, has falsified the theory of evolution and thoroughly confirmed by one of the most prominent theories of creation.  It seems therefore somewhat audacious that the Supreme Court and the National Academy of Sciences should determine that evolution is a scientific theory but creationism is not.

---

^[1]  Gould, Stephen J., and Eldredge, Niles, %u201CPunctuated Equilibria, an Alternative to Phyletic Gradualism,%u201D reprinted in the appendix of Time Frames: The Rethinking of Darwinian Evolution and the Theory of Punctuated Equilibria by Niles Eldredge, (New York, Simon and Schuster) 1985.

^[2]  Lakatos and Zahar, p. 369, italics in original.

^[3] Darwin, Charles, The Origin of the Species (Penguin Library edition, 1982) p. 292-293.

^[4]  Darwin, Charles, The Origin of the Species (Penguin Library edition, 1982) p. 301-302.

^[5]  Neville, George T., %u201CFossils in Evolutionary Perspective,%u201D Science Progress, vol. 48 (January 1960),   p. 5

^[6]  Dawkins, Richard, The Blind Watchmaker (New York:  W. W. Norton, 1987), p. 229.

^[7]  Gould, Stephen Jay, %u201CThe Interpretation of Diagrams:  Is the Cambrian Explosion a Sigmoid Fraud?%u201D  Natural History, vol. 85, (August/September 1976), pp. 18, 28.

^[8]  Neville, George T., %u201CThe Fossils in Evolutionary Perspective,%u201D Science Progress, vol. 48 (January 1960), p. 1, 3.

^[9]  Denton, Michael, Evolution, A Theory In Crisis (Bethesda, MD, Adler & Adler, 1985), p. 175-176

^[10]  Eldridge, Niles, %u201CDid Darwin Get it Wrong?%u201D  Nova (November 1, 1981), p.6

^[11]  Johnson, Philip E., Darwin On Trial, (Downers Grove, Illinois, Inter Varsity Press, 1993), p. 33.  See also p. 60.

^[12]  Darwin On Trial at 40.

^[13]  Darwin On Trial at 61-62.

^[14]  Grass%uFFFDPierre-P., Evolution of Living Organisms (New York:  Academic Press, 1977), p. 4.

Chapter 10: Biology and the Evolutionary Hypothesis