God’s Truth
Why Darwin was Wrong 1
Abstract
© Dr M D Magee
Contents Updated: Sunday, July 25, 1999
Evolution
Phibber does not mince his words here—he does not believe in evolution “by natural processes alone” in which “God played no active part”. Here are his arguments.
Eminent biologists have “shot holes in it”. Phibber gives us two quotations in which six scientists are named or listed as the authors. The main quotation is by Professor W R Thompson in the introduction to Dent’s centennial edition of Darwin’s Origin of Species. Thompson issues a stern rebuke to those studying evolution not to substitute speculation for sound evidence and not to pretend they have what they have not. This is sound advice if only because much evolutionary evidence has to be stumbled across.
Evolutionary biology is not like Phibber’s own field of physics where laboratory experiments can easily be carried out. The laboratory experiments possible in evolutionary studies are quite limited. However, Phibber quotes Thompson’s warning with glee as if it somehow disproved the theory of evolution all together. The modern reader can turn to The Blind Watchmaker by Richard Dawkins to get a picture of evolutionary theory.
Other eminent biologists do not believe the evidence though they accept the theory “for philosophical reasons”. The “philosophic reasons” Phibber seems to mean are simply to avoid the use of God in evolution. Here Phibber mentions items by two scientists one of whom says that no adequate theory other than Darwin’s has been proposed so that “there is no alternative to that of retaining Darwinism with all its weaknesses”. The other “evolutionist” also confesses “a shortage of solid evidence”.
Only Explanation
Now, Phibber is always telling us he is a scientist but he does not argue that the electric light comes on because God made it, ignoring any speculation about electrons. In the case of evolution, however, the intervention of God is the only adequate explanation though quite what it explains I do not know. I can imagine Phibber protesting, “We have plenty of evidence for electrons but little for evolution—that is not fair”. To which I can only reply, “It was not ever thus”. There was a time when electrons were not well established but I do not recall physicists saying, “Forget the idea of electrons. It’s all God’s work”. If any did then they were wrong. Why should Phibber treat evolution any differently. Perhaps it will emerge.
Phibber protests there are a hundred and one theories of evolution because there are too many gaps in the evidence. It seems that he does not like the way evolutionary biologists change their views. There is a lack of evidence because evolution usually needs millennia to occur, the number of species to have left remains is small and the remains rarely form a continuous record. In such a situation, a new fossil could radically change previous hypotheses about particular lines of evolution.
Phibber does not like this. He likes his theories clear cut and brooking no argument. He seems to have a strangely authoritarian view about theories. If they have to change in the face of evidence then ditch them and bring in something sensible like God!
Once upon a time, scientists conjectured that the giant dinosaurs called the apatosaurus—formerly known as the brontosaurus—were semi-aquatic. They were so huge it was quite reasonably felt that they must have used the buoyancy of water to support themselves. A fresh examination of all the evidence by a young palaeontologist, Robert Bakker, showed that the idea was mistaken.
Phibber does not like this. He likes his ideas fossilized. He also objects to writers like H G Wells who use strongly affirmative language to describe evolution. Phibber however feels it perfectly acceptable for the Christian to write this gross distortion. “There was a young planet, steaming hot and lifeless. It cooled down a bit. Then, presto! life appeared”. If I employed a scientist who thought this was an adequate summary of the emergence of life on earth, I would sack him. Yet Phibber has evidently had a successful life as a civil servant in a government research laboratory. No wonder British science in particular and the country in general are in a mess with employees like these.
How Did Life Arise?
How did life arise, then? One thing is sure. Phibber does not like anyone putting forward ideas that might explain it. Small molecules have to link to make large molecules and the presence of oxygen strongly inhibits any such reactions. Physicists and geologists then found that at one time the earth had an oxygen free atmosphere. “Don’t tell me”, yells Phibber. “I don’t want to know. It might mean God didn’t create life!” Imagine his delight when the deduction was shown to be false. But it wasn’t false. It is now well established that the earth’s atmosphere began as a reducing atmosphere, lacking oxygen, and through the formation of life became an oxidising atmosphere as it is now. Indeed, it is the presence of life that keeps the atmosphere as it is.
Serious objections to the theory remain unanswered by biologists. This is Phibber’s real argument. Evolution does not occur evenly but by spurts with long periods between when species are stable in their environment. This was an idea put forward only a few years after Darwin’s original publication but was ignored. It explains one of the major difficulties of Darwin’s original idea. The fossil record is not continuous. The “punctuated evolution” theory has now been established, blowing gaping holes in the criticisms of people like Phibber who like their creations complete.
“How then do curious specialities like the specially adapted teat of a whale evolve?” asks Phibber. Believers in the Fundamentalist idol, the bible, are fond of conundrums like this, that they lack the imagination to offer explanations for themselves. The teat has to prevent salt water getting into the mouth of the baby whale and poisoning it. “A half developed whale nipple would be worse than useless”, crows Phibber failing completely to understand the self-evident fact that mother whale did not suddenly decide she needed the teat one afternoon. Until we can see a whale evolving the precise answer to how the teat developed will remain unknown to us. But it is certain that the teat did not wait until whales were whales before it evolved.
When the small mammals that ran about on shorelines seventy million years ago started escaping from the dinosaurs that tried to eat them by running into the water they fed their babies in the normal way. As they evolved to suit their aqueous environment they would have returned to the land to feed their young. But in the face of any terrestrial threat they would have returned to the sea. In such circumstances, the infant might still have attempted to feed from the unadapted teats whilst in the water and those that did so more successfully would have had more chance of surviving to breeding age.
A stage would come when some mother proto-whales had more waterproof teats than others and therefore need risk less time feeding their young ashore. They then had an evolutionary advantage because the land was more dangerous. Mothers with poorly adapted teats failed to bring their offspring up to breeding age. That is exactly how evolution works. Over millennia the whales gradually adapted to a purely aquatic lifestyle and simultaneously their teats adapted to allow their offspring to feed successfully in the water.
Phibber’s depiction of a lengthy and complicated process as if Mrs Whale decided one tea time that she would feed Junior in the sea and found that junior died at supper time is childish. “If the whale nipple evolved it must have done so in one mighty leap—from nothing, to perfection, in one go”. One can imagine a dolt writing this but Phibber tells us repeatedly he is a scientist, and flashes his credentials to prove it. Phibber graduated pre-War. And they say that academic standards are falling.
On he goes. Hundreds or thousands of complex organs could have been “of little or no use until fully formed”. He gives the example of the archer fish which shoots down flying insects with a jet of water. To do this it has to have eyes adapted for vision through the surface of the water. Phibber, despite his qualifications, finds it difficult to understand how the fish evolved a “water pistol”, special vision and an unerring ability. It is, however, his problem, not a problem of evolution.
Speculate
Again we have to admit that, since the past is not open to us to investigate, we have to speculate. Phibber, as a physicist, might not approve of speculation but until we can simulate a hundred million years in a few days in a laboratory, in evolutionary biology sometimes we have nothing better. It is not a speculation on the scale of a super-universal being!
One imagines that the fish was originally a fairly normal fish that fed, like a trout, from insects landing on the surface of the water. Fish have the ability to spurt water from their mouths anyway. It is simply not finely honed into a weapon. The fish lurked beneath the surface for its prey and would have had an imperfect sight of insects above the surface. Fish with marginally better vision of the insects above the surface would have had a better chance of getting prey because they would have had a better chance of anticipating their flight and therefore when they landed on the surface.
Simultaneously, a fish evolved which spouted, perhaps with anticipation, as the low flying insect skimmed the surface of the water. Normally the insect would escape as the fish snapped at it, but in this case it just ran into a low bulge in the water, got caught by the surface tension and then eaten by the fish. These fish had a slight evolutionary advantage which gradually improved by natural selection. Its spurting ability, its vision and its skill in aiming all improved together in small steps until we have the archer fish of today, a remarkable fish that is still improving its skill because it still cannot always get its range right first time.
Phibber’s assertion that a half developed organ or ability is worse than useless is not true. Our imagined proto-archer fish would have a real advantage simply by being able to bring down insects skimming the surface that its rivals would lose. “Ah!” says Ernest Phibber, “But the archer fish has all the insects it needs just falling into the water. How do you explain that?” The obvious answer is that the archer fish did not evolve in its present circumstances but in some place or some era where insects were less common or competition for them fiercer.
So what is Phibber’s response to such ideas of evolution? “Evolution depends upon progress by lots of small steps, each one small enough to occur by blind chance”. Phibber does not enlarge on this but one guesses he is contrasting “blind chance” with “God’s purpose”. All knockers of evolution claim that it occurs only through “blind chance”.
Yet, the whole point of natural selection is that it is not a process of chance. It is certainly true that a trait which subsequently proves valuable to the survival of the species will arise through chance mutation but if it is harmful to the species it will soon disappear, simply because the creatures with the trait are at a disadvantage and die before they reproduce. This is anything but chance.
Only features which are not harmful will be retained, and if at some stage they prove beneficial to breeding then they will quickly be inherited by the whole population while alternative traits die out or become recessive. This is not chance. Polar bears are not white by chance. Dolphins are not fish shaped by chance. They get their characteristics by natural selection. They adapt to the environment they are in. But the selection takes a very long time by our standards even when it occurs rapidly.
Evolution Is Never Right
“There’s another problem”, screams Phibber. “Evolution is either too fast or too slow. It is never right. Look at the horse. It might be a fast runner but it is a ‘dreadfully slow evolver’”. You begin to think he has lost his marbles completely. The sequence of fossil species for the evolution of horse is remarkably good. There is perhaps no better example of changes accumulating until the appearance of the original species is quite altered.
If you reject this as a good example of evolution, you would have to accept it as a very good example of God being unable to make up His mind, which is odd, since Phibber has already assured us that He can see the future. Alternatively, you must come back to the theory that God is a great practical joker who is always splitting his sides when He plants another piece of evidence to fool gullible human palaeontologists. Unable to criticise the evolution of the horse on grounds of evidence, Dr Phibber decides that it has been too slow!
The evolution of the coelacanth, a fish of the Indian Ocean has been even slower, about 300 million years have passed and it has scarcely changed. He could have quoted many other types of animals. Phibber totally fails to understand that there is no law of nature that says that something must evolve or that it must evolve at any particular rate. If an environment is stable for 300 million years and the creature is perfectly adapted to its environment then why should it evolve?
On the other hand if an environment changes suddenly and some species subject to that environment has sufficient genetic variability, then it could evolve rapidly into quite a different form. The truth is that Phibber does not understand evolution. Whether it is because he lacks the intelligence or whether he has some perverse antipathy to it because it threatens his cherished belief that we are all descendants of Adam is your choice. Perhaps it is both, because anyone who can believe an inadequate primitive explanation instead of an adequate sophisticated one must be lacking brain cells somewhere.
