CREATION IS COMMON DESCENT:

Putting Theory to the Test: a review of What Darwin Got Wrong by Jerry Fodor (Edward J. Larson, Wilson Quarterly)

First, the authors set up a straw man. In this case, they do that by saying at the outset that the Darwinian theory of evolution involves two distinct parts: the concept of common descent, which holds that all plants and animals evolved from a common ancestor, and the theory of natural selection, which posits that random, inborn mutations in individuals selected by a survival-of-the-fittest process drive evolution forward. The authors stress that they reject only the latter theory, while erroneously contending that, historically, religious opponents have attacked only common descent.

Fodor and Piattelli-Palmarini's central thesis is that random, inborn mutations chosen by a survival-of-the-fittest mechanism cannot generate the observed diversity of species in the time that has elapsed since life began on Earth. They point to the many non-random influences on variation (such as gene regulatory networks, which control cellular processes, and horizontal gene transfer, in which an organism incorporates genetic material from another organism without being a descendant of that organism) debated among biologists today, and, somewhat separately, assert that natural selection logically cannot work. Their philosophical assault on natural selection has two parts. They argue that biologists simply err in speaking about selection without providing for a human, divine, or natural-law selector. Further, they throw in their version of the shopworn philosophical argument that natural selection is a meaningless tautology: Of course, if fitness is equated with survival, only the fittest will survive. (In this sense, the Newtonian equation F = ma is a tautology too, yet physicists still find it useful.) Though the authors present their critique as new, it is similar to countless assaults on the theory of natural selection over the past century and a half. What this book adds is a useful survey of newer examples of non-randomness in evolution.

Contrary to their claim that common descent is the bugbear of those who dispute evolution, the historical controversy, especially in religion, focused on the idea of natural selection, which undermined natural theology by depicting the origination of species as a ruthless, random process, apparently inconsistent with the character of a loving Creator, rather than on the concept of common descent, which can posit God as the designer of benign evolutionary law. After all, as the illustrious late-19th-century American cleric Henry Ward Beecher said, "Design by wholesale is grander than design by retail." It is the theory of natural selection that still riles the intelligent design movement, many of whose leaders (such as Lehigh University biochemist Michael Behe) accept common descent.

Even more bewildering is the authors' contention that Charles Darwin conflated common descent and natural selection into a single idea. Darwin clearly differentiated between the two parts of his theory, and recognized that the concept of common descent stood on a much firmer foundation. In 1863, he wrote to Harvard botanist Asa Gray, "I care much about Natural Selection; but that seems to me utterly unimportant compared to the question of CREATION or MODIFICATION." Eleven years later, when the conservative Princeton theologian Charles Hodge launched the American culture wars over evolution with his book What Is Darwinism? it was natural selection—not common descent—that led him to equate Darwinism with atheism. Analogous reasoning drove William Jennings Bryan to ignite the populist crusade against teaching evolution that culminated in the 1925 Scopes trial. Bryan had made his peace with common descent, at least for everything except humans; it was the use of a survival-of-the-fittest mechanism to explain human nature that enraged him.

You probably ought not argue that the bifurcation is a straw man if you're going to then cite Darwin himself as thinking one half of his theory more important to him than the other. But, as Mr. Larson showed in his own book, Evolution, it is absurd to even call the idea of common descent Darwinism since it was a truism. Natural Selection is all that he added to the discussion. And, as the review concedes, Natural Selection is wrong and accepted to be so by even "Darwinists." All that remains is common descent, which no one ever disputed, least of all Creationists, since it is what Genesis describes.

Posted by Orrin Judd at April 13, 2010 5:51 AM