Hey Get Those Rhinos Away From
Volume 1, Number 3
August 1985
A publication for the members of SOR
NOTES FROM PETER GORDON
Hey, get those rhinos away from my Lear jet. Early this spring, Thomas Jukes, Professor of Biophysics at UC Berkeley, and indefatigable anti-creationist, wrote (in a letter to Kevin Wirth, SOR Director of Research) that creationists who denied “the overwhelming molecular evidence for evolution” lacked “scientific credibility” and could be “compared to rhinoceroses wandering through a jet-airplane factory.”
Jukes wrote, further, of the “beauties of modern discoveries in molecular evolution,” a sentiment he shares with many other evolutionists: it is widely believed that the data found in theories of molecular evolution provide exactly the sort of hard evidence the general theory of evolution requires. Bernard Davis (Bacterial Physiology Unit, Harvard Medical School) put the matter very plainly, when he wrote recently:
In most of its development evolutionary biology has depended on morphological homologies, both in the fossil record and among living species; but this approach has not revealed the continuum of transition forms between species that Darwin predicted.
Moreover, while he expected further research in paleontology to fill in the gaps, we no longer entertain that hope. But now, at last, molecular genetics has provided a direct, radically different kind of evidence for such continuity…Not only does molecular genetics provide the most convincing evidence for evolutionary continuity, but this evidence should impress a public that is well aware of the power of this science in other areas. (“Molecular Genetics and the Foundations of Evolution”, Perspectives in Biology and Medicine, vol. 28: pp. 252-253, Winter 1985)
It is clear that Jukes and Davis, among many others, hope that the molecular evidence will explain–and persuade–where other evidence has failed. But several puzzles have emerged from the study of molecular genetics, puzzles which ought to dampen the enthusiastic claims made for the evidence.
A number of these puzzles are examined in a recent paper by Paul Erbrich (Hochschule fur Philosophie, Munich), “On the Probability of the Emergence of a Protein with a Particular Function,” Acta Biotheoretica, vol. 34: pp. 53-80, 1985. Erbrich writes, in the abstract:
Proteins with nearly the same structure and function (homologous proteins) are found in increasing numbers in phylogenetically different, even very distant taxa (e.g. hemoglobins in vertebrates, in some invertebrates, and even in certain plants)…
The probability…of the convergent
evolution of two proteins with approximately the same structure and function is too low to be plausible, even when all possible circumstances are present which seem to heighten the likelihood of such a convergence. If this is so, then the plausibility of a random evolution of two or more different but functionally related proteins seems hardly greater. (p. 53)
The bulk of Erbrich’s paper is devoted to a careful, critical quantitative analysis of the likelihood of molecular evolution. In his conclusions, however, he points out that some larger issues are involved:
The probability for the de novo emergence of a particular protein by chance alone is extremely small, even for a very imperfect one…Why then does the scientific theory of evolution hold on to the concept of chance to the degree it does?
I suspect it is the fact that there is no alternative whatsoever which could explain the fact of universal evolution, at least in principle, and be formulated within the framework of natural science. If no alternative should be forthcoming, if chance remains overtaxed, then the conclusion seems inevitable that evolution and therefore living beings cannot be grasped by natural science to the same extent as non-living things–not because organisms are so complex, but because the explaining mechanism is fundamentally inadequate. (pp. 77-78)
Recent Work from Australia. Question: will Michael Ruse ever have a (semi) kind word to say about creationism, or the work of creationists?
Answer: probably no time soon. But in a review published in New Scientist, 13 June 1985, p. 33, he did see fit to call the theory of creation a “paradigm,” a nearly respectable term, quite a distance from some of Ruse’s earlier judgments (such as “Scientific Creationism is not just wrong: it is ludicrously implausible.
It is a grotesque parody of human thought, and a downright misuse of human intelligence.” Darwinism Defended, p. 303) Ruse was reviewing Evolution: A Theory in Crisis, by Michael Denton, an Australian molecular biologist (Burnett Books, pp. 368). As far as I am aware, the book has not yet found an American publisher; SOR will be attempting to obtain a copy for review.
Denton’s book sounds very interesting, although it “produces a rather dreary sense of deja vu” in Ruse. According to Ruse, Denton “gives us much critical writing about paths (of change), which is then generalised, even to the fact of evolution.” Ruse denies that “questions about mechanism” cast any doubt “on the fact of evolution.”
I have to disagree. While once I might have agreed, this answer (which aims at preserving the mysterious fact of evolution) seems to me to be increasingly barren, a mere dodge.
Evolution is, if anything, a theory of transformation, and transformation requires a mechanism. The connection between the postulated mechanisms of evolution, and its status as fact, is critical, far more than many evolutionists care to admit.
This file originates from:
Origins Talk RBBS * (314) 821-1078 Missouri Association for Creation, Inc. 405 North Sappington Road Glendale, MO 63122-4729 (314) 821-1234 Also call: Students for Origins Research CREVO BBS (719) 528-1363