In fairness to the opposition, Dawkins proves their point
It pains me to call a brother in Christ “the opposition”, but I gotta say that it’s how I feel.
If you have been following my blog over the last week, I have been reviewing “Evidence for Creation” by Tom DeRosa. I received the book as a gift from my Pastor, who is also a friend. He knows I believe in an Old Earth, and he gave me this book coincidentally when I started reviewing Glenn Morton’s evidence for Adam and Noah existing 5.5 million years ago. Given the fact that God’s timing is always perfect, and the fact my pastor has never given be a book like this before, and it was right after I started reviewing Glenn’s theories in earnest, I decided that I should take it seriously… and it’s been a bumpy ride.
In my review of the first three chapters of DeRosa’s book, I have found over and over where DeRosa shows a lack of understanding of the scientific method, and a particular lack of understanding of Evolution, Geology, and Physics. It’s been quite upsetting to see that so much of the negative press received by the Creation Science and Intelligent Design movement is this well deserved. I’m serious, because these are brothers in Christ here, and I am finding that too much of what I hear is true. But enough of that. I still have two more chapters to review and would like to put off my stressing until I actually have to.
So, what am I blogging about today? And why bring up “Evidence of Creation”? Well, there is a discussion on Steve Martin’s An Evangelical Dialog discussing in part the development of the eye. One person posted a link to a 1995 article by Dawkins entitled, “Where d’you get those peepers”. In the article, I found some justification for some of the views held by DeRosa, and by extension, the Creation Science crowd. It turns out that they are not completely unjustified in their views of Evolutionists, though I will not let them off the hook until they actually demonstrate an understanding of the science they debunk. But, I am trying to be fair, and so here is what I found in Dawkins’ article.
He was writing of a computer model created by a pair of Swedish scientists, Dan Nilson and Susanne Pelger. The model suggests that if you start with nothing more than a set of light-sensitive cells, a fish could develop a complete and functioning eye in less than 500,000 years. If this is accurate, then it is quite significant, because this is not very long geologically speaking. It practically predicts that the first fossil we find in the process of the eye’s development is much more likely to be a fully functioning eye than not. However, assuming that one can fairly judge the study based only on the article, there are several things about it that are worthy of criticism. I outlined a few of these on Steve’s blog as follows:
Nilsson and Pelger began with a flat retina atop a flat pigment layer and surmounted by a flat, protective transparent layer.
Assuming the article linked to has enough information to judge the study, the quote above describes a starting point that is both too much and not enough at the same time.First of all, it assumes that every improvement can be taken advantage of. In other words, it assumes that the fish’s brain will automatically evolve to exploit every improvement, every generation. (Don’t misunderstand. I think the brain’s evolution would keep up at some rate, but not necessarily in lockstep)
Furthermore, it assumes that taking advantage of the improvements results in more favorable selection 100% of the time.
But addressing these points in the model should not constitute a satisfactory response to an Old Earth Creationist, because the eye they started with is already too far along in the evolutionary process to diffuse an Intelligent Design argument.
To his credit, Dawkins states, “It would be nice, in the future, to do another computer model, this time at the level of the inside of the cell. to show how the first living photocell came into being by step-by-step modification of an earlier, more general-purpose cell.”
Naturally, I would then want to go further back still, but this would take us in the right direction.Of course, this stuff is only just registering on my radar, so if such advances have already occurred, I would be quite interested in the results.
Now, in light of all of this, how would this article appear to a Creation Scientist such as DeRosa? In what I have read so far in “Evidence for Creation”, DeRosa has criticized Evolutionists for essentially replacing God with what DeRosa terms “the magic wand of ‘time.’ “ I felt this characterization was a bit much, but having immersed myself in DeRosa’s book, the following paragraph in Dawkins’ article really stood out to me:
Thus the creationist’s favourite question “What is the use of half an eye?” Actually, this is a lightweight question, a doddle to answer. Half an eye is just 1 per cent better than 49 per cent of an eye, which is already better than 48 per cent, and the difference is significant. A more ponderous show of weight seems to lie behind the inevitable supplementary: “Speaking as a physicist, I cannot believe that there has been enough time for an organ as complicated as the eye to have evolved from nothing. Do you really think there has been enough time?” Both questions stem from the Argument from Personal Incredulity. Audiences nevertheless appreciate an answer, and I have usually fallen back on the sheer magnitude of geological time.
Now, Dawkins isn’t wrong, mind you. Quite the contrary. Time is Evolution’s friend, and is certainly a tool of God in my opinion. (Note my implication that “time” is a slave to God, and not the other way around) However, the fact that Dawkins got used to falling back on “the sheer magnitude of geological time” as a knee-jerk response could make it appear like a cop-out after a while. After all, just as I am taking Dawkins’ article as a completely self-contained argument, his verbal quips are likely to be taken as such by Creationists.
So, reading this like a Creation Scientist, I started looking for where Dawkins might dig himself out of this “hole” (from the Creationist’s perspective)… and you know what? Based on the arguments I posted on “An Evangelical Dialog on Evolution”, I would say that he did not. The reason? Well, first of all, a model cannot be complete, almost by definition. This is not the fault of the model, and is no reason to abandon computer models in my opinion (lest I be out of a job), but DeRosa continuously pounds away at what he consideres mere guesswork within Evolutionary Theory. Consequently, even the valid use of computer models cannot get past the fact that “model assumptions” are just another word for “guess”.
But even if the Creation Scientist grants the validity of computer models, the only way to really demonstrate that the earth has had enough time to evolve an eye from scratch is go back to some point before the advent of light-sensitive regions on cells, and then simulate the evolution from that. Furthermore, the model needs to incorporate the evolution necessary to exploit the improvement, and take into account each improvement’s subsequent impact on the percent chance of survival. However, they didn’t do that. Therefore, the 400,000 years computed by the model is not only too short for what it does cover, it doesn’t even start far enough back. I realize Dawkins acknowledged the latter, and I give him full credit for it. However, the practical result is that someone truly questioning the possibility of an eye evolving without God’s participation can easily reduce the article to Dawkins’ own knee-jerk reaction, leaving the skeptic with only the “magic wand of time” to contend with.