Retorts

Querying Evolution

Today the assumption of evolution is almost universal. As a skeptic about evolution, I wonder if someone who is a believer could provide some justification for their commitment to it. Perhaps a member of the NZ Skeptics would like to do this seeing they appear to be firm believers, even making it a tenet of their organisation to oppose skeptics like me! In particular could three questions be addressed.

First. What precisely is the basic mechanism of evolution? If evolution is an all encompassing thing as is claimed with such certainty, then surely the mechanism is something which must have been observed closely and repeatedly, and thus identified very clearly. What is the mechanism?

Second. At some point in the evolutionary saga -- if it occurred -- non-living matter had to spontaneously generate a life form. Absolutely essential to this very first life form was the ability to reproduce itself -- after all, if it didn't reproduce it would have been irrelevant to any evolutionary story. Now clearly the biological complexity required for even the most elementary life, not to mention that enabling self-reproduction, is very great. What documented, verifiable evidence is there that this momentous evolutionary transition from non-life to life did, or even could, take place?

Third. Fundamental to the structures and functions of biological life today, and necessarily so for such life throughout all time, is coded information. Thus all the structures and functions of the first life form must have been encoded for from the very start otherwise it would never have come to be. The information is prior to the organism or any part thereof in the sense that no aspect of an organism will come to be unless the concepts defining the aspect in question are encoded in and accessible to the organism. Of course this can only occur in a holistic, integrated, fully functioning biological system. What documented, verifiable evidence is there that codes and coded information (concepts) have ever, or could ever, arise independent of a mind?

Though unrelated to the origin of concepts, it is worth reflecting on the fact that the absolute maximum time available to evolution for the informational complement of the first life to be acquired without error -- from no information to that coding for every structure and function, including self-replication -- was the "life span" of that first life!

If any space is left after addressing these three questions, perhaps what is though to be the very best knock-me-down-drag-me-away incontrovertible illustration of evolution could be given as a dessert.

Renton Maclachlan, Porirua

We would suggest Richard Dawkins's The Blind Watchmaker as a readable book on these topics.