Evolution (Introduction)

by dhw, Thursday, April 16, 2009, 11:11 (5496 days ago) @ David Turell

George has referred us to an article by Calilasseia on the Dawkins website which purports to deal with fallacies relating to probability ... the writer uses the image of a billion Chinese tossing coins, thus drastically reducing the odds against someone throwing 10 heads in a row (i.e. against chance creating life). David has pointed out the fallacies in the article on fallacies, and asks what seems to me to be the crucial question: "To have living organization of organic molecules they have to be directed by a code filled with information. Where did the information come from?" I'd like to elaborate on this. - Firstly, it's not always clear in the article and subsequent discussion whether people are talking about evolution or abiogenesis, and they often fail to separate the two theories, so perhaps we should draw some lines here. Natural selection, epigenetics, mutations and Lamarckism relate to processes that work on existing material. The theory of evolution tells us nothing about how the material first came to life, and Darwin himself made it clear in The Origin of Species that that was not his concern. ("How a nerve comes to be sensitive to light, hardly concerns us more than how life itself first originated." Difficulties on Theory.) It's perfectly possible to believe in evolution without believing in abiogenesis. - The problem I would like to raise can be summed up through a supportive response from ESPRITCH to Calilasseia's article: "Haemoglobin is actually an excellent example of how evolution produces complex things; by assembling simple existing useful things to build more complex useful things and then using those things to build still more complex useful things." You only have to look at the verbs to see the problem: "produce", "assemble", "use", "build". Evolution is not a conscious designer. Evolution is a process. It doesn't exist independently of living organisms, and can only work within them. Now go back to origins. Most of us assume that the first "simple existing" things were unconscious. They didn't have a clue about the possibility of sex, sight, hearing, memory, consciousness etc. What, then, performed the producing, assembling, using, building? Obviously they did. So where did they get the ability to do it ... or as David asks: "Where did the information come from?" - To sum it up, we are expected to believe that chance brought about not only life and reproduction, but also the ability both to adapt to changing environments and to increase complexity. None of these were the work of evolution. If the first living creatures had not been able to reproduce and adapt, life would have ended soon after it began, and if the ability to increase complexity had not already been potentially present, there would have been no evolution. - The billion Chinese are tossing coins looking for a combination. The first primitive organisms weren't looking for anything. They knew nothing. They simply existed. Yet what they produced was so complex that we still haven't figured it out. Evolution is Chapter 2 in the history of life, and it makes sense, but in most books Chapter 2 depends on what happens in Chapter 1.