Is Darwin Still Relevant?

Geoffrey Simmons

Editor’s note: We are delighted to introduce a new series, “Modernizing Darwin,” cross-posted at Shabbat.com, by Geoffrey Simmons, MD. Dr. Simmons is the author of What Darwin Didn’t Know and Billions of Missing Links. He is a Fellow with Discovery Institute’s Center for Science & Culture.

During Charles Darwin’s time, many educated people still believed in spontaneous generation, meaning that living beings can emerge from non-living things. Maggots arose from rotting meat, amphibians grew from flooded soils, and rats were created by decomposing garbage. In addition, birds were thought to fly to the moon for the winter, tobacco-smoke enemas relieved headaches, and fleeing slaves suffered from drapetomania, an illness caused by masters who were too kind.

It is readily evident that Darwin was a sincere and conscientious scientist, but his view of the human body might be compared to studying Mars with a simple magnifying lens. There was a lot of mysticism and far too many guesses in 19th century. The time has come to modernize his views.

Darwin didn’t know why children resemble their parents. Nor did he know much about the enormous complexity of the processes happening in the womb during the nine months of gestation. He had no knowledge of antibodies, hormones, enzymes, nerve conduction, glucose metabolism, electrolyte maintenance, oxygen-carbon dioxide balance, chromosomes, temperature regulation, or clotting factors. Just to name a few.

There are approximately 75 trillions cells in the human body with hundreds of different functions and well over a quadrillion interactions. Yet human cells were thought by Darwin’s contemporaries to be building blocks much like the bricks and stones used in buildings. Now we know that virtually every cell in our body is more complicated than any city in the world.

In many quarters, it is considered heresy (or ignorance, at best) to question Darwin’s writings — much as it was once assumed that our planet is the center of the universe. Nowadays, much of the discussion regarding the theory of evolution has unfortunately moved from civil scientific debate to oftentimes angry, political arguments. This needs to change.

This series will discuss intelligent design (ID), which is the most likely, rational explanation for why and how we have come to be here. The available evidence points to the conclusion that human beings are largely run by information systems that could not have come about by lightning strikes, chance, coincidence, trial and error, mutation, wishful thinking, survival of the fittest, artist’s pencil drawings, or accident. Some agent of incomprehensible intelligence has been and still is guiding what we call evolution.

Constructive questions and courteous comments will be appreciated.

There was a lot of mysticism and far too many guesses in 19th century. The time has come to modernize his views.

This is the classic faith/science divide.

The author, viewing evolution only through the lens of religion, can't accept that Darwin isn't deified by modern scientists.

Darwin is rightly respected but the idea that his views haven't been "modernized" in the last 160 years could only come from someone who thinks all wisdom is received wisdom.

Certainly not from anyone with the slightest familiarity with evolutionary biology.

My Christian perspective leaves me without a dog in this fight.

I can accept an all intelligent God who provided a big bang that resulted in all the physical constants we know (and still don’t know) that made intelligent life certain on earth.

I can also accept an all powerful God who made each of the millions of species one at a time.

I don’t assume that these two approaches are mutually exclusive. They may have been combined.

I have no preference and can go wherever evidence and reason leads.

I’ve tried to answer your question somewhat. But there are many other good questions. Is there free will? If so, how so? Are their good and bad actions? If yes, how can that be if all there is are molecules in motion? etc.

‘Do you believe that human conscience and consciousness ultimately came from mindlessness?’

firstly, consciousness is the state of being conscious, which means aware of surroundings and reacting to them, which just about all life does, so I have no idea why you bring that up...as for conscience, it denotes the ability to discern rightness from wrongness, which would of course concern only those beings with a strong socio-cultural understanding, i.e. humans with their hyper developed brains...why did the human brain grow so large, while the chimp brain remained stuck in the distant past? that’s the real question; a logical answer would be a change in diet, from abundant but nutritionally deficient leaves and grass, to less ubiquitous but more nutritious fruits and nuts, and ultimately, other animals, all of which required larger and more cooperative social units, or tribes, if you will, and of course fueled the growth of cranial activity, enabling abstract thought to become a reality...

your usage of the term mindlessness is also odd, in this context; just because abstract thought is beyond the capacity of most life forms does not confer mindlessness upon those forms...

I was referring to human conscience and human consciousness. The question posed was to make one think how this would ultimately result from mindlessness (no purpose, no direction, no intellect) – the mind from the mindless.

Personally I do not believe human consciousness and conscience can ultimately come from mindlessness. Mindlessness can only bestow the illusion of consciousness and conscience – the illusion beauty and love – the illusion of any design we believe to see in nature. If our exsistance were to ultimately come from mindlessness, then everything we believe about ourselves and what we see around us is false. But don’t take it from me:

Dawkins - we are merely lumbering robots doing the bidding of selfish genes created by a blind watchmaker in a universe of blind pitiless indifference without good or evil.

Rosenberg – we have an illusion that thoughts really are about stuff in the world - we live with the myths that we have purposes that give our actions and lives meaning - and that there is a person “in there” steering our body.

Provine - no ultimate foundation for ethics exists - no ultimate meaning in life exists – and human free will is nonexistent.

Pinker - brains are shaped for fitness, not for truth.

Ruse - ethics is an illusion created by our genes to deceive us – morality is an adaptation.

Dennett - Nobody is conscious - we are all zombies - Darwinism is like “a universal acid; it eats through just about every traditional concept and leaves in its wake a revolutionized world-view.

No one can claim that neo-darwinism, which is ultimately a mindless process, made our brains but yet has no relevance on the brain's contents. IOW, neo-darwinism if true, basically states we were built by a mindless process that employs primal survival and is solely responsible our thoughts and behavior. This underlying fundamental idea that deals with mankind’s very essence is what separates neo-darwinism from other scientific theories.

But then with me the horrid doubt always arises whether the convictions of man's mind, which has been developed from the mind of the lower animals, are of any value or at all trustworthy. Would any one trust in the convictions of a monkey's mind, if there are any convictions in such a mind?
- Charles Darwin

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