Silent Gene Theory

Well I am about to become over stressed as Christmas approaches, so I thought I'd try and get another post in (aren't they regular) before Christmas. Of course many think that the Theory of Evolution by Natural Selection is in about as much doubt as the "Earth going round the Sun". In reality this is not the case. I have just read a book, not by someone who proports to have any theistic faith, who doubts this theory for one very simple reason: Natural selection reduces rather than increases variation. So over long time scales where does the variation come from upon which natural selection works? In his "Silent Gene Theory of Evolution", Warwick Collins proposes that variation comes from genetic mechanisms within the cell and that the Selfish Gene Theory of evolution propounded by Dawkins et al has holes in it.

Of course the usual answer to the question "Where does variation come from?" is that variation comes from mutation. However, most mutations are deleterious, they lead to death. Indeed beneficial mutations seem far too rare to account for the vast increase in variation throughout the history of life on earth. So it makes considerable sense, and there seems to be some encouraging evidence, that much of the genetic material in cells, whilst actually "junk" (there seems to be no use for it), may well have a function over evolutionary time scales. It is an interesting proposal that accords with what we actually see in comparing genomes. It would be a fruitful line of research, yet he does make the point that Darwinian Evolutionary Theory seems to so have mastered the academy and become an unassailable orthodoxy within the academy, that no dissent is allowed. Neodarwinian thoought will not allow any investigation into alternative theories, or so he claims. I thought that it was only supposed to be among the religious that there is thought to be such a thing as blind faith and suppression of free thought?! Maybe this is simply human.

The Grand Design - Why atheism is idolatrous.

Last week I read the Grand Design by Stephen Hawking in preparation for an evening lecture entitled "I want to believe but my scientific brain won't let me". We had a good evening but there were no questions about "The Grand Design". So I thought I wouldn't let my reading go to waste and jot down some thoughts.

The first thing is that I think I've understood the multiverse theory for the first time, but this means that it does not fit into the Evolutionary ideology that Dawkins and others propound. Darwinian evolution works on the basis of natural selection of existing variants - some surive and some don't. And whilst Dawkins postulates the multiverse hypothesis as evidence of his own particular philosphy of life, it is entirely different.

Hawking explains that the multiverse hypothesis is really an application of Feynmans "Sum over histories" approach in the quantum world, that an electron in reality travels in one path, not because it is the only one it travels, but the most probable. "That is, as it moves from its starting point A to some endpoint B, it doesn't take one definate path, but rather simultaneously takes every possible path connecting the two points". Hence in diffraction pattern experiments, even a single electron forms a diffraction pattern, whilst at the same time passing through only one slit. It follows Feynmans "Sum over histories". Similarly if Feynmans "Sum over histories" can be applied to the beginning of the universe, then it means that this universe has not been selected,as evolution would require, rather it is the most probable. It is following existing rules of quantum physics.

But this begs the question - where did these rules come from? They point to a rational mind as Einstein beleived and Paul Davies proclaims, thought neither from a Christian perspective.

Several observations spring from this.
At the beginning of his book Hawking declares - "Philosophy is dead" but then proceeds to use a whole variety of philosophical non sequiturs to infer that God does not exist. For example - he views God as only "lighting the blue touch paper". So if the blue touch paper can be explained - there is no need for God. Few Christians would argue this extreme deist position and few would deny that God has ongoing involvment in what we do understand. Christians do not believe in a God of the Gaps. He thinks that God is excluded from the realms we do understand - which is philosophically suspect. What he does not address is why Feynmans "Sum over histories" should work at all. He seems unaware of the questions that Einstein, Anthony Flew and Paul Davies seem impressed by such as "Why should our minds understand the mathematical laws which seem to governe the universe?" Or "Why is the universe ordered according to rules?" We might add - why is it that Feymans sum over histories comes up with a particular kind of universe - a "self conscious universe" as Paul Davies would put it, and not some other kind of universe. "We are truly meant to be here" he would say.

To boil it down - Stephen Hawking thinks he has eradicated the need for God simply by being able to explain the mechanism of the origin of the universe. Even if he is proven to be correct - this begs the question - where did the mechanism come from? He ridicules God being the answer to an infinite series of causation - but is it not equally laughable to be committed to an infinite series of causation - without end. This somehow makes matter, or the mechanisms of matter eternal doesn't it? What decided that Feynmans "Sum over histories" should be the way things work at the quantum level? And who's to say that there is not some other explanation with different rules behind the quantum level just as the quantum level lies behind the different rules and laws of Newtonian Mechanics?

It seems that atheist scientists are committed to the eternality of matter, an unending causation without beginning and without end. Philosophically speaking they believe that matter is eternal for this is not something that can be scientifically demonstrated - they simply believe it - all matter comes from matter and matter is all that matters. They seem quite ignorant of the fact that philosophically speaking - they attribute divine qualities to matter, and logically speaking they are deifying matter. Christians call this idolatry, the worship of created things.

Why atheism is a faith.

Well, it has been rather a long time since I last posted on my blog. And my hope is to have a bit more time to do this in the next few months! Over the last year I've managed to do several talks, debate with the Head of Promotions of the British Humanists and fine tune a presentation on why it makes sense to believe in the God of the Bible.

It has also been interesting to meet and chat with local atheists and find out what underpins their beliefs. Of course many atheists would not claim to have any beliefs, simply to accept the conclusions of science. In our discussions it has become apparent that certain lines of evidence are dismissed on the basis of Ockham's razor (accept only the simplest explanation) or that only scientific knowledge is reliable.

But one has to have faith to do science. By faith I mean a trust in a particular assumption that is not demonstrable by the discipline itself.

There is faith that scientists themselves observe things rigorously by the scientific mehtod, so there is the belief that humans can be biased and prejudiced and that scientific method can free people from this.
There is the faith that we can understand what scientists say - so there is belief in truth, real reality not illusory reality.
There is faith that experiments reveal the true picture of reality.
There is faith that the history of science and peer review help reveal truth.
There is faith that there are no other explanations at higher levels than those of science, a claim to know that some knowledge is not knowledge - namely history.

So this is self contradictory.

When the views of atheists are boiled down to their essence they believe that science is the only true source of knowledge - they are committed to scientism. There is the pretence that they are accepting only those things that can be scientifically verified, but in reality they are also accepting history (for scientific knowledge is historical) the humanities (for scientific knowledge is acquired by people) and faith (for it is easily demonstrable that science arose out of Christian culture both in terms of the world view of scientists and the interest generated by this world view).

The claim is that atheism is practical, it accepts only that which is verifiable by ones own senses. But in reality this is an illusion. Science itself has beliefs and history which cannot be elucidated by science. Science points beyond itself.

Why elusion of God is nothing to do with science

Well I've committed myself to doing a presentation in the next few weeks entitled "Darwin, Dawkins and the elusion of God". I must admit it's focussing otherwise random thoughts and helping me to get through some reading I would have otherwise pushed to the bottom of my "to do" list. What has been fascinating in this reading is just how much inaccuracy is promulgated in such an important question, as if people want reasons not to beleive in God. It has been a delight to read Anthony Flew and his correction of the popular view that Darwin and Eistein were atheists. They clearly were not and Flew goes back to their original writings. What persuaded him to shift from atheism to theism was the fact that there are laws of nature at all and that we can understand them. He also has a brilliant illustration of the anthropic principle in which he pictures walking into an hotel room and finding his favourite drinks, his favourite literature distributed round the room, his favourite shampoo in the shower and his favourite films preprogrammed on the TV. Someone was expecting him. And he argues the universe is such that it appears as if it was expecting human beings. I'm looking forward to following this up by reading Paul Davies. Flew concludes his book with an investigation into the resurrection narratives of Jesus Christ as presented in the New Testament with obvious interest. Here science has lead him to consider theism and theism has lead him to consider the revelation of God in Jesus Christ. What a reversal of the popular view. And atheists becomes theist through science. What is becoming more apparent the more I read and study is that science can provide both an excuse for dismissing God and a route to considering God. So surely this fits with what we may surmise is the true place of science, particularly in evolutionary biology. It does not decide the question of God. So how can it possibly be used to avoid the existence of God? If science is a discipline which excludes the supernatural explanations a priori how come it ends up pointing towards theism at all? Surely only by a selective focus only on those aspects which seem to preclude God, or the god that many people believe can lead to scientists boldly claiming to have disproved God. Surely it is only nature red in tooth and claw that could be used to elude the existence of God, but how? If God can be seen even in these phenomena, where is there left to hide or escape him?

"Why there almost certainly is a God" - the title of a book I have been reading by Keith Ward, recently the Regius Professor of Divinity at Oxford University, previously the Professor of Philosophy at Kings College London. Whilst obviously philosophical I found that which I have read (the first half or so) very lucid. It was heartening to hear someone so highly qualified in terms of thinking demolishing Dawkins claim to be able to explain everything not only by science but also by evolutionary theory. He points to the irreducible nature of consciousness as something that is acknowledged as real knowledge by philosophers. In other words this is a distinct kind of knowledge which whilst springing from the brain cannot be reduced to synapse activity. So this was heartening. He then applied this argument to the potential, that if mind is a distinct kind of knowledge, then it is possible for mind to exist without a physical cause, a spiritual mind. Science simply cannot comment on this potentiality. I found this argument persuasive.

Another aspect of his argumentation was that even if evolution explained the diversity of life on earth then it was remarkable, that, given a few laws that were very finely tuned, such diversity could arise from so simple a process. Given the improbability of this occuring he suggested that this makes some kind of lawgiver more probable than that the laws of evolution have arisen spontaneously. This is a more complex argument and I have missed out a few steps, but the key thing is that just as the laws of the motion of the planets do not cause us to doubt the probability of the existence of God, so the laws of evolution, equally finely tuned to produce that which is intended, cannot disprove the existence of God. Quite the contrary. Ward postulates that the laws of evolution are sufficiently elegant for him to propose that, like other laws in the universe, they seem predisposed to the formation of complex and ultimately intelligent life. He uses Dawkins very own "experiments" with computers to show how evolution only works with, as Dawkins admits, very specific values in the various laws of evolution, like generation times, muitation rates, selection pressure and the like. The necessity that these laws are finely tuned seems to be similar to the anthropic principle in physicas, the principle that seems to anticipate the development of intelligent life.

I am looking forward to rereading his arguments and progessing down his train of thought and whilst I would not consider myself a theistic evolutionist, he certainly introduces an intriging possibility - which agrees in my mind with a basic scriptural principle. God is in control of the universe, even its most chaotic elements, and he is in control in ways in which we can see the means of his control, through natural laws. It is not that gravity is some separate force that a places the movements of the planets beyond his control. Rather that we have discovered the ordered way in which he does it. God is involved in every movement of any particle due to another via the force of gravity. Similarly if God has established the laws of evolution, there is no reason why he is not totally involved in what appears to be a chaotic and random process. God could guide the evolutionary process, however it might function. Evolution, far from being an argument to reject the existence of God, paradoxically reveals an order in what otherwise would appear disordered and chaotic, the competition we see in nature.

This does not solve the problem of how to distinguish between aspects of nature that are red in tooth in claw due to the fall or due to the way in which God intends living things to behave, but either way there is order. Which agrees with Genesis 1.

Is evolution falsifiable?

Most scientific theories produce predictions which can be tested. This means that if the theory is wrong it can be proved wrong and hence falsified. But for a long time I've wondered whether evolutionary theory can ever produce predictions that can be proven or disproven.

For example, evolution predicts the requirement to acquire food efficeintly. It predicts that competition is so fierce that nothing will be wasted in the struggle to survive. So when it comes to organs this would suggest that no animal would waste any resources on needless vestigial organs that prevent digestion of food. Yet there are not only vestigial organs like the appendix, but also organs like the spleen that seem to have no necessary function. Yet an evolutionist will postulate some imagined explanation. Perhaps these organs have a vital role that we have not discovered yet. Perhaps there is some developmental necessity that produces them or indeed maybe the genes required to get rid of them have not yet mutated.

Our spleen can be removed with no damaging effects it seems, but a ruptured spleen is serious. And as for the appendix, why has this not been selected out of existence? Here is a vestigial organ that can cause infection and death. One would surmise that it would provide significant selective advantage to those individuals that did not have it. Their genes would be passed on far more. Why does it persist? How can this be explained evolutionarily? What function does it perform that leads to the survival of the individual? It seems like this is a challenge to evolution by natural selection. But no, for vestigial organs are explained away by evolutionary story telling, a non falsifiable theory. They must have some benefit, even though we do not know what it is and could measure statistically the disadvantage of their existence.

What has happened to measurement? What has happened to hard facts? How many people die due to the risks associated with having an appendix? And what of the spleen? How much benefit would these organs have to give to an individual to outweigh the risks of possessing them? But then these measurements would enable us to falsify the theory of evolution by natural selection - if we test the hypothesis. For evolution to be true no animal can posess any structure for significant periods of time in which benefit is outweighted by cost, but here is a very costly organ, with no benefit that we can discover.


Another example is diving birds - like tachybaptus ruficollis, the little grebe. Diving birds enable us to measure food foraging because we can observe them constantly as they forage on a lake. Obviously the more food an animal gets, the more it can grow, the more offspring it can produce the more successful it is. And of course we can study the success and rate of foraging in diving birds more than any other. But why do diving birds rest so much? A trip to the park is sufficient to prove this. They will spend hours just floating or sleeping.

Of course we may propose theories of rest for recuperation, cell function and the like. But what was interesting to me when I watched diving birds from dawn til dusk was how much time they spent resting, on top of the 12 hours of rest they had at night. Any bird that could rest less would instantly do better, reproduce more and out compete others. So why doesn't it develop such behaviour? Why do so many species seem to spend so much time doing very little? What survival advantage does this have. Now of course we can propose that it does have survival advantage. But can we measure it? Can we show that the reproductive effectiveness of this bird increases because it rests? Or maybe it has the lazy gene that is linked to the gene for good diving and so good divers have also to be a bit lazy, but this is too difficult to prove so we just assume it's true.

A similar question exists when it comes to black plants, of which there are many species. They harvest far more light because they do not allow any of it to pass through their leaves. So why has there not been the evolution of black plants? They would very quickly out compete the green leafed varieties because they would grow faster, produce more seed and gradually out compete all other plants. Of course the evolutionary explanation is that there must be some disadvantage to having black leaves, that it is evolutionarily beneficial to, in animal terms, throw away half your food beause otherwise the leaf gets too hot, or loses too much water. But leaves take on the ambient temperature of their surroundings. And in the rainforest there is no shortage of water. But still there be some great evolutionary advantage to being green - like leaves over heating or the like. But where are the experiments that prove this? It appears to be just imagination and story telling. Heads I win, tails you lose. If evidence is produced that challenges the theory, the theory can be used to explain that too. Whatever the question is, the answer is evolution. It appears that evolution becomes such an all encompassing explanation that there can be no null hypothesis, no situation in which we can concieve it could be disproved and so no experiment which could test it significantly. It almost appears unscientific, almost religious.

Why evolution is a religion

"They have taken my theory and turned it into a religion" Charles Darwin. Of course Darwin was no zealous Christian preacher, but he was no atheist either. It is not difficult to explain why. He trained as a Christian minister before embarking in his voyage round the world. He was careful to state his theory as just that, a theory, not an all embracing metanarrative that explains the whole of our existence. And he was very conscious of the gaps in his theory, which he knew there were at that stage. Some of the gaps have been closed. The germ line, finally proved in the early 20th century and the discovery of the genetic code by Crick and Watson lent great support to his theory as a demonstrable process today. But no scientist has seen evolution actually happen. We have witnessed for the last 150 years the present process of natural selection, which no-one denies. Of course we can now see the changes in gene frequencies as resistance to antibiotics spreads. But even the classic cases of change frequencies - of melanic forms of the peppered moth or the genes which express sickle cell anaemia, are not evidence for evolution by natural selection over time scales which are 1 million times greater. We have simply not observed evolution by natural selection in operation. It is one thing to observe natural selection over the last 150 years. It is another to prove that it is the most dominant factor in the survival of species over a billion years. Many Christians, me included, believe in an old earth. Many Christians can accept what science clearly shows, changes in species, even speciation events in plants that can be observed today. But no single animal speciation event has been observed. We can piece together the probable proliferation of different species using island biogeography. We can extrapolate (always a dangerous practice) from our observations over that last 150 years back into the last 150 million years. But we should be cautious. There are simply too many questions that remain.

Dawkins would have us believe that "Natural Selection by means of Natural Selection, or the Differential Survival of Favoured Races" to give Darwin's theory its full title, is about as much in doubt as "the earth going around the sun". But most theories are just current theories until the better theory comes along. And eminent scientists, that Dawkins treats with little respect, like the late Stephen Jay Gould, an evolutionary biologist (with a palaeontological expertise once at Harvard), disagrees with his certainties. Gould has published many books which suggest that natural selection may indeed be quite irrelevant in the history of evolution. It may be a great mechanism for the proliferation of species, but may simply be too slow, too powerless to account for the explosion of forms of life at different points in the fossil record. For example the cambrian explosion, which he expounds in his book "Wonderful Life" simply cannot be explained according to the gradual evolution which Darwin propounded. Dawkins gives Gould no credence at all.

Not because he is not an evolutionary biologist, nor because he is not an atheist but because he is not an atheistic fundamentalist, because he quite rightly separates questions of the existence of God from science. Gould knows that the fossil record is simply more complex and does not support Darwins theory neary as clearly as Dawkins might hope. So Gould proposed a theory - called punctuated equilibria. He proposed that throughout the history of life on earth there have been cataclysms that have had far greater impact in the survival of different species than has Darwins natural selection. And over long time scales, natural selection may be quite irrelevant to which species survive. In historical terms, it may be the case that people who are good at fighting might be the best able to survive, but that makes little difference when a nuclear bomb goes off.

For example, the Dinosaurs are thought to have been decimated at the K/T boundary by some cataclysmic event, most likely an asteroid. Now it doesn't really matter how well adapted you are as a dinosaur to eat your competitors or reproduce, if an asteroid lands on your head. And Gould, an evolutionist, an atheist, does not think Darwin's theory explains everything, even in the evolution. We can imagine how floods, ice ages, volcanic eruptions, changes in sea level or climate, may well have been more significant over long time scales, than natural selection. This is not to propose a God of the gaps. But just that the shape of life on earth may not be solely due to a process which is "red in tooth and claw".

But to Dawkins this all sounds too religious - floods and earthquakes and volcanoes being more significant in the history of life than the slow gradual changes that Darwin postulated. So why does Dawkins think Darwins theory can explain everything, from stars to music, from beautiful art to why we love each other? Even when there are credible scientists who have no theistic axe to grind, who disagree? Why has he made evolution into his religion, his metanarrative (and surely the selfish gene in which he proposes that the cross of Christ is somehow explicable in evolutionary terms) when it can barely be proven that it explains the fossil record? Why does the fossil record have so few intermediate forms, when Darwin acknowledged that his theory must predict thousands of intermediate forms? We have at best, 3 or 4 out of millions of fossils? Darwins theory predicted there would be many, many clearly intermediate forms, yet when we find fossils they all fit into existing families? This is clear evidence that over long time scales evolution by natural selection cannot explain the evidence.

Dawkins and others who would want us to believe that evolution as fact disproves God has wedded this particular theory to a view of the universe where nothing intervenes to alter the course of history from outside. So asteroids are embarrassing, as are floods and anything that challenges his dogmatic belief that we live in a universe where there is only "blind pitiless indifference". Now that seems going a bit far doesn't it? To safeguard science from the God hypothesis Dawkins denies any appearance, even if recognised by a fellow atheist, of intervention. Anything that could be interpreted as divine, anything that alters the course of evolutionary history that is not gradual and Darwinian. Even if it takes the fossil evidence seriously, even if it acknowledges that natural selection has a part (if not the main part) in evolution, because his dogma is challenged, it must be wrong. Does this appear to you to be an open and scientific mind?

Of course Dakwins claims to follow in the footsteps of the prophet Darwin. But could we ever find on Dawkins lips what Darwin bemoaned: "They have taken my theory and turned it into a religion?". Theories are just that, theories. They are a shaky foundation to begin a religion, a metanarrative.