A Short Critique of Darwinism

Darwinism, or the Neo-Darwinian Synthesis has come under increasing attack as a theory, in light of recent discoveries in molecular biology and the field of origin of life research. Many problems remain to be explained by the theory, but we shall briefly discuss two basic problems which persist for proponents of "Darwinism", l) The need to explain how life first arose on this planet and 2) The need to explain how complex multicellular life "evolved" in the relatively short period of time available between the end of the Active Asteroid bombardment and Geophysical Cooling phases of the early earth (roughly 3.86-4.0 billion years ago. Given that the evidence (C12/C14 fixing analyses), now establishes that unicellular life forms date to between 3.5 and 3.6 billion years, a very narrow window of time is therefore available (<350 million years) for first life to arise and become extremely complex even at a unicellular level.

Some proponents of Darwinism argue that the origin of life problem is not germane, since Darwin's theory did not include it. This is patently absurd as has been pointed out by J.P. Moreland (1). While it is true that a hypothetical objection to Moreland's argument can be made that abiogenesis or (life from non-life) is not specifically addressed by Darwin's theory, it certainly is by extension, that is intuitively, since without life to begin with, the question of common descent with modification is moot. Specifically, without the presence of life, there is nothing to undergo evolution (change over time) regardless of the mechanism employed, whether Darwinian (random chance driven mutational change conferring survival advantage to the fittest), or by some other means.

As an example of just how desperate origin of life studies have become, the focus is now off the Earth, so called "panspermia" whether of the so-called passive (intra-stellar drift variety), or active (ala ET) variety. What we really have then, is the Neo-Darwinist camp admitting that they are at a loss to explain a terrestrial origin of life on this planet or any other in the universe for that matter. This admission moves the debate out into space. In doing so, the dilemma is only postponed, given the total lack of evidence for life in space (separate from the Earth), and the problems associated with noxious radiation exposure if the "passive vehicle" were utilized, presuming life arose elsewhere and "seeded" the earth.

While Darwinists appear to be on the correct path by appealing to an extra-terrestrial origin for life in the author's opinion, the Bible suggests an extra-universal not intra-universal origin by a transcendent being not simply an extra-Earthly intra-universal origin. Such an origin has the utility of explaining not only the origin of first life, but all of time, space, matter, and energy as well, ie, the entire Universe. One might call this the case for the Extra-Universal Imperative. Scientists in the Origin of Life area would be wise to consider this when asking that huge sums of money be allocated for SETI research, which is unlikely to be fruitful given the realities of the limitations of general and special relativity, ie. the known physics of our universe.

The argument against Darwinism can be successfully waged even if one dispenses with the origin of life problem and confines the discussion to the "evolution" of early life forms on the earth. As indicated above, if we accept the scientifically derived age of the Earth as 4.5 billion years and an age of roughly 3.5 to 3.6 billion years for life of any type on the Earth, (with life-prohibiting continual asteroid bombardment between 4.5 and 3.86 billion years), the time is geometric orders of magnitude too short to allow for the random change from human genome sizes in the minimal allowable range of 200-500 gene products (theoretically smallest limit), to that of human beings (which within the past year has been found to be at least 30,000 with over 3 billion nucleotide base pairs). Please see data of Kenyon, Behe, Ross, Denton Bohlin, et al. for substantiation of these calculations,(2).

Not only is the information source (the genetic code vis a vis DNA) for such a proposed evolutionary development totally lacking in the theory, but the assumption that extremely complex unicellular "free standing" life forms at a gene product size of roughly 470 (mycoplasma genitalium) could have arisen "quickly" between 3.86 and 3.5 billion years by only natural means is simply implausible, based on the calculations of many independent investigators,(3). Hence the appeal to panspermia on this basis, and on the basis that no theory is presently available to account for the development of life from non-life. For those interested in having a brief list, a summary is included which outlines some of the major problems with Darwinism:

1) Rapid origin of life from non-life.

2) No evidence to suggest that a primordial "soup" ever existed.

3) Early Earth's atmosphere was not "reducing" (Error of Urey-Miller type experiments).

4) Extreme Complexity of earliest life even in it's most elementary form

5) Irreducible complexity of biologic life at a subcellular level (e.g.. the bacterial flagellum).

6) Rapid unexplained origin of genetic code with complex information systems (DNA/RNA/protein synthesis)

7) Cambrian "Explosion" proving horizontal origin of markedly different species at one time.

8) Lack of predicted Fossil Intermediaries

9) Lack of DNA contribution to Homo Sapien Sapiens by more primitive bipedal primates such as Homo Erectus or Neandertals.

10) Lack of evidence including "Archaeopteryx" that reptiles "evolved" into birds.

Ref:

1) Moreland, J.P. "The Creation Hypothesis": Scientific Evidence for an Intelligent Designer. Downer's Grove, Ill. InterVarsity Press, 1994.

2) Ibid

3) Ibid