National Geographic Ignores The Flaws in Darwin's Theory

In the November 2004 issue of National Geographic, David Quammen answers this question with a resounding "NO. The evidence for Evolution is overwhelming."

In Quammen's view, most people who reject Darwin's theory of evolution do so out of ignorance, so he proceeds to lay out some of the evidence for it. But the evidence he lays out is exaggerated, and the problems with it are ignored.

Quammen explains that Darwin's theory has two aspects: the "historical phenomenon" that all species of living things are descended from common ancestors, and "the main mechanism causing that phenomenon," which is natural selection. The evidence presented by Darwin, he continues, "mostly fell within four categories: biogeography, paleontology, embryology, and morphology."

The first category includes evidence from similar species in neighboring habitats, such as finches on the Galápagos Islands; the second includes evidence from the fossil record, such as extinct horse-like animals that preceded modern horses; and the third includes evidence from similarities in early embryos that supposedly point to their common ancestry.

All three categories are rife with problems that Quammen overlooks. For example, the Galápagos finch story is complicated by the fact that many of what were originally thought to be thirteen species are now interbreeding with each other -- even though Darwinian theory regards inability to interbreed as the distinguishing feature of separate species.

The fossil record of horses is also much more complicated than Quammen makes it out to be; actually, it looks like a tangled bush with separate branches rather than a straight line of ancestors and descendants. Even worse, Quammen ignores the Cambrian explosion, in which many of the major groups ("phyla") of animals appeared in a geologically short time with no fossil evidence of common ancestry -- a fact that Darwin himself considered a "serious" problem that "may be truly urged as a valid argument against" his theory.

Finally, embryos fail to show what Darwin thought they showed. According to Quammen, the evidence for evolution includes "revealing stages of development (echoing earlier stages of evolutionary history) that embryos pass through before birth or hatching." Darwin (as quoted by Quammen) thought "the embryo is the animal in its less modified state," a state that "reveals the structure of its progenitor." This idea -- that embryos pass through earlier stages of their evolutionary history and thereby show us their ancestors -- is a restatement of German Darwinist Ernst Haeckel's notorious "ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny," a false doctrine that knowledgeable experts discarded over a century ago.

It is actually Quammen's fourth category, morphology (i.e., anatomical shape), which Darwin himself (as quoted by Quammen) called the 'very soul' of natural history, that provides the basis for the other three. In each category, similarity in morphology ("homology") is interpreted as evidence for evolutionary relatedness. According to Darwin, features in different organisms are homologous because they were inherited from a common ancestor through a process he called "descent with modification."

The biologists who described homology a decade before Darwin, however, attributed it to construction or creation on a common archetype or design. How can one determine whether homology in living things comes from common ancestry or common design? Simply pointing to the similarities themselves won't do, as biologist Tim Berra inadvertently showed when he used different models of Corvette automobiles to illustrate descent with modification in his 1990 book, Evolution and the Myth of Creationism. Although Berra wrote that "descent with modification is overwhelmingly obvious" in Corvettes, we all know that automobile similarities are due to common design rather than common ancestry. Only by demonstrating that a Corvette can morph into another model by natural processes could someone rule out the need for a designer. Similarly, the only scientific way to demonstrate that similarities in living things are due to common ancestry would be to identify the natural mechanism that produced them. According to Darwin's theory, that mechanism is natural selection.

So the four categories of evidence on which Darwin relied to support his theory of the historical phenomenon of evolution rely, in turn, on his theory about the mechanism of evolution. But what is the evidence for Darwin's mechanism?

The principal evidence Quammen cites is antibiotic resistance. "There's no better or more immediate evidence supporting the Darwinian theory," Quammen writes, "than this process of forced transformation among our inimical germs." Perhaps so; but then Darwin's theory is in serious trouble. Antibiotic resistance involves only minor changes within existing species. In plants and animals, such changes had been known for centuries before Darwin. Nobody doubts that they can occur, or that they can be produced by selection. But Darwin claimed much more, namely, that the process of selection could produce new species -- indeed, all species after the first. That's why Darwin titled his magnum opus The Origin of Species, not How Existing Species Change Over Time.

Yet no one has ever observed the origin of a new species by selection, natural or otherwise. Bacteria should be the easiest organisms in which to observe this, because bacteria can produce thousands of generations in a matter of months, and they can be subjected to powerful mutation-causing agents and intense selection. Nevertheless, in over a century of research no new species of bacteria have emerged. Quammen cites Darwinian biologists who claim to have produced "incipient species," but this merely refers to different strains of the same species that the researchers believe -- on theoretical grounds -- might eventually become new species. When the truth of the theory itself is at stake, such a theoretical extrapolation hardly constitutes "overwhelming evidence" for it.

So the evidence Quammen presents for Darwin's theory falls far short of confirming it. Biogeography, paleontology, embryology and morphology all rely on homologies, and the only way to determine whether homologies are due to common descent rather than common design is to provide a natural mechanism. Yet Darwin's mechanism, natural selection, has never been observed to produce a single new species. Scientific theories (Quammen acknowledges) should not be accepted as a matter of faith, but only on the basis of evidence. And given the evidence, any rational person is justified in doubting the truth of Darwin's theory.

As Quammen points out at the beginning of his article, public opinion polls conducted over the past twenty years have consistently shown that only about 12% of Americans accept Darwin's theory that "humans evolved from other life-forms without any involvement of a god." The reference to "god" is significant, because it shows that science is not the only thing at stake here: Darwinism also makes religious and philosophical claims. Most importantly, Darwinism is committed to naturalism, the philosophy that nature is all that exists and God is imaginary -- or at least unnecessary. It is not surprising, then, that many people reject Darwinism on religious grounds. Nevertheless, Quammen maintains, most Americans are antievolutionists only because of "confusion and ignorance," because "they have never taken a biology course that deals with evolution nor read a book in which the theory was lucidly described."

As someone with a Berkeley Ph.D. in biology, I dispute Quammen's characterization of Darwin's doubters as confused and ignorant. On the contrary, Quammen's article makes it abundantly clear why it is quite reasonable to doubt Darwinism: The evidence for it is "underwhelming," at best.

The No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 requires every state to formulate standards for science education. As a guide to interpreting the law, Congress also passed a Conference Report recognizing "that a quality science education should prepare students to distinguish the data and testable theories of science from religious or philosophical claims that are made in the name of science. Where topics are taught that may generate controversy (such as biological evolution), the curriculum should help students to understand the full range of scientific views that exist, why such topics may generate controversy, and how scientific discoveries can profoundly affect society.''

In other words, students should be encouraged to distinguish the actual evidence for Darwin's theory from the naturalistic philosophy that accompanies it. Furthermore, students should be taught not only the evidence for the theory, but also why much of that evidence is controversial. Congress recommends this; the American people overwhelmingly support it; and good science demands it.

Quammen claims that evolution is "more crucial nowadays to human welfare, to medical science, and to our understanding of the world, than ever before." Yet no country in history has made more contributions to human welfare and medical science than America. Is it just a coincidence that the vast majority of citizens in the most scientifically successful nation on Earth are skeptical of Darwin's theory? I think not. As a scientist myself, it seems to me that a healthy skepticism is essential to good science. This caveat applies to all theories, including Darwin's.

If Quammen's article had accurately presented not only the evidence for Darwin's theory, but also the problems with that evidence, it might have made a valuable contribution to scientific literacy in America. As it stands, however, the article is nothing more than a beautifully illustrated propaganda piece. The readers of National Geographic deserve better.

Jonathan Wells, Ph.D. Senior Fellow, Center for Science and Culture Discovery Institute

If evolution is such a lock, why is it that there is not one documented instance in the past 200 years of a member of one species giving birth to a completely new species with a different genetic code?

Not true. There are many different instances of speciation: The Scientific Case for Common Descent"

Pay close attention to Section 5 part 6. There are plenty of examples right there, with more not listed.

The pictures looked very cool, though, you have to admit! (I perused it while waiting for my car to be worked on Friday.)

Somewhat seriously, it would be very difficult for the average layperson to review this kind of stuff, and not believe an organization like Nat'l Geographic and all the scientific work they cite.

No, I'm not a Darwinist, nor strict Creationist. But, IMO, this debate always feels like very, very deep waters that intimidates most people, myself somewhat included.

-- Joe

For discussion's sake, your last sentence may indeed by accurate (who knows?). I'm having trouble understanding where you stand on this issue, but that theory is not far off from my own thinking.

But you seem to contradict yourself earlier by saying (and I paraphrase) 1) evolutionary theory doesn't infer random acts of chance with respect to the existence of species, and 2). evolution may follow the "free will" of chemistry. So which is it?

I started this by stating that the National Geographic Article in question was a poor one.

You asked this...

Tell me: If the National Geographic ran an article on Newtonian physics, in which it brushed aside the arguements of those pushing antigravity and inertialess drives while at the same time brushing aside the problems with Newtonian physics (such as reletivistic issues); whoudl you still consider the article to be a poor one?

And I guess the answer is that if you want to address a defined group of people who don't understand or accept Newtonian Physics, and yet you fail to account for questions that group has consistently articulated, then yes, it would be a poor article producing more heat than light. (In Newtonian terms)

The point is, rational dialogue places strict demands on those who would approach her. I've found many creationist arguments to fall far short of reason. I've found an equal percentage of evolutionist apologetic to be poorly executed and unpursuasive.

If evolutionists are going to win over the half of the world that rejects their teachings despite a monopoly on education on the matter, they will, some day, need to raise the bar on quality at their own presses. After all, they are the ones with all the capability for abstract thought, why not require them to achieve the higher standard of discourse first?

> "Dear God, here we go again"

Well, I for one am done with this one. Strictly speaking, there's not much point to these threads... the Creationists will never accept reason, the Evolutionists will never accept fantasy, so we just stand here and bark at each other. I feel it's important to put in a few barks in support of evolution and reason, so fifty years from now historians will be able to look back and see that conservatives truely weren't all superstitious boobs... even though that faction did leads to the liberals taking over the world.

Could it be that it takes longer than 200 years to produce a new species? We're talking life on a pretty grand scale here, unless we want to claim that the word was created about 6,000 to 9,000 years ago, or whatever Bishop Usher claimed.

A) Could it be? Yes. That still doesn't change the fact that species to new species evolution has ever been witnessed by a single scientist.

B) There are fruit flies that have a life cycle of 8 hours. The time frame is relevant, but it is also worth noting that in the 100-some years these flies have been used by scientists, not one has ever seen a fruit fly give birth to a completely different species of fruit fly or, say, a monkey.

I'm not saying that evolution isn't a possibility. What I am saying is that it is odd that scientists are willing to put their own "faith" into accepting evolution as fact when they know they can't replicate this theory in the lab. It's one of those irony-thingies, because "faith" for Creationism is dismissed out of hand with exactly the same scientific proof as the creation of new species by evolution.

But you seem to contradict yourself earlier by saying (and I paraphrase) 1) evolutionary theory doesn't infer random acts of chance with respect to the existence of species, and 2). evolution may follow the "free will" of chemistry. So which is it?

"free will" does not imply randomness. God may have put into place the necessary chemicals for life and then sat back to watch, knowing that life would develop but not concerned with whether it had two legs or eight, only that at some point, life would evolve to a level that it would be able to understand and communicate with the 'creator'. OTOH, he may have not cared and just got tired of his experiment and went off to bigger and better concepts.

Evolutionary theory does not try to explain the universe nor does the evolutionary theory try to explain the existence of species through random acts of chance.

OK… But some ‘use’ TOE to explain everything and since TOE excludes ID in any form or fashion, what is left but ‘random acts of chance’?

Given such sentiments, it’s not surprising that discipline after discipline is now being “Darwinized.” Cosmology has its self-reproducing black holes governed by cosmological natural selection (see Lee Smolin’sThe Life of the Cosmos). Ethics and psychology have now become evolutionary ethics and evolutionary psychology (see Robert Wright’s The Moral Animal and Steven Pinker’s How the Mind Works). Even the professional schools are being overtaken, so that we now have books with titles like Evolutionary Medicine (medicine), Managing the Human Animal (business), Economics as an Evolutionary Science (economics), and Evolutionary Jurisprudence (law). And let’s not forget religious studies, in which God genes (i.e., genes that cause us to believe in God irrespective of whether God exists) and the Darwinian roots of religious belief have become a growth industry (see, for instance, Pascal Boyer’s Religion Explained: The Evolutionary Origins of Religious Thought).
Such enthusiasm for Darwinism might be endearing except that its proponents are deadly earnest. For instance, in Darwin’s Dangerous Idea Daniel Dennett views religious believers who dissuade their children from believing Darwinian evolution as such a threat to the social order that they need to be caged in zoos or quarantined (both metaphors are his). Because of the myth of invincibility that now surrounds it, Darwinism has become monopolistic and imperialistic. Though often associated with “liberalism,” Darwinism as practiced today knows nothing of the classical liberalism of John Stuart Mill. “Darwinian liberalism” tolerates no dissent and regards all criticism of Darwinism’s fundamental tenets as false and reprehensible.
- William A. Dembski

And lets not forget Dawkins’ The Blind Watchmaker: Why the Evidence of Evolution Reveals a Universe Without Design or Thornhill and Palmer’s A Natural History of Rape: Biological Bases of Sexual Coercion.

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