Probably
the three greatest origin mysteries are the origin of the universe,
the origin of life, and the origin of human intelligence. Scientists
have no explanation for the first of these mysteries, for the Big
Bang is unexplained under current science. Darwinism offers no answer
to the second of these mysteries. We cannot at all explain the
origin of life through any theory of natural selection, as natural
selection requires life to exist before it can begin.
But
Darwinists claim to have an explanation for the third of these
mysteries, the origin of human intelligence. They claim that human
intelligence arose because of natural selection. Natural selection
involves traits becoming more common in a species when such traits
make members of that species more likely to reproduce, or survive
until reproduction. A simple Darwinian account of the origin of
human intelligence would be that our ancestors got smarter and
smarter because there was a survival value in increased intelligence,
and natural selection tends to favor traits that give a survival
value.
But
there are reasons for doubting the plausibility of such an
explanation. One reason is that the human mind seems to include many
characteristics that do not make a human more likely to survive until
he reproduces. Such traits include spirituality, moral reasoning,
introspection, self-awareness, altruism, philosophical ability,
aesthetic appreciation, and mathematical reasoning.
Another
reason for doubting the plausibility of a Darwinian explanation for
human intelligence is one that may be called the “high-hanging
fruit” reason. This is the reason that the evolution of
intelligence in a species would seem to be a case of nature following
a path to reproductive success vastly more difficult than easier,
simpler paths to reproductive success, which would be rather like
someone plucking a fruit from the upper branches of a very tall tree,
rather than plucking a fruit from the lower branches. Imagining such
a thing does not seem very plausible.
To
clarify what I am talking about, let us consider the options
available to evolution after some evolutionary ancestor of man
descended from the trees, and began life on the ground. We can
imagine a variety of options that evolution might have taken to help
guarantee reproductive success. They include some of the following:
Evolve
a greater sense of smell.
Such an adaption (which we can see in organisms such as dogs and
bears) is extremely useful in finding food.
Develop
claws.
Such an adaption (which we can see in bears) can be a powerful
weapon against predators when combined with a powerful forelimb.
Develop
a large thorax with very powerful arms.
Such an adaption (which we see in gorillas) can be a powerful
defense against predators.
Develop
legs longer and faster than human legs.
We don't know of any primate that developed such an adaption, but it
would have been very useful in evading predators.
Develop
digestive enhancements.
We can easily imagine some evolution of the digestive system which
would have allowed a species to eat a wider variety of foods
(including grass), which would have made finding food a much easier
task.
Develop
a shorter reproductive cycle, with more offspring.
This approach to reproductive success would have been rather the
opposite approach of developing intelligence. Instead of evolving a
larger brain (which limits the number of offspring, and often
involved death to the mother in childbirth because of the difficulty
of fitting a large head through the birth canal), a species could
have evolved in a way that might that might have led to far more
child births per mother, with shorter gestation periods.
Develop
camouflage.
We can easily imagine an adaption that might have made human
ancestors less likely to be noticed by predators, perhaps something
like a greenish fur.
Develop
better vision.
Such an adaption (which we see in eagles, who have 20/4 vision much
better than ours) would have made it much easier to find food.
These
are only some of the possible adaptions that a human
ancestor might have taken to increase its reproductive success. All
of these adaptions have one thing in common: they all would have been
vastly easier for evolution to have achieved than the evolution of
intelligence. Darwinism tells us that the more complicated an
adaptive trait is, the more mutations it required. Science has
absolutely no specific account of the number of mutations needed to
develop human intelligence, but we can be quite sure that the number
of mutations needed to develop human intelligence must have been many
times greater than the number of mutations needed for the evolution
of adaptions like those listed above.
All
of the items listed above are rather like low-hanging fruit available
to evolution. So why did evolution (when dealing with man and his near ancestors) pass over such possibilities, and
instead produce human intelligence, a fruit hanging so much vastly
higher up on the tree? It's rather like a hungry person climbing
25 meters up a tree to pluck an apple, rather than just plucking an
apple hanging 5 feet off the ground.
Why did evolution pluck the high-hanging fruit rather than the low hanging fruit?
Limiting ourselves to Darwinism, we
cannot at all answer this question by suggesting some kind of “arrow
of progress” in evolution by which it favors grander and grander
designs. According to Darwinian accounts, natural selection doesn't
care a whit about “progress,” but cares about nothing but
reproductive success.
Let
us imagine that we discovered a planet on which there was some animal
species that used laser beams to zap its prey -- laser beams fired from some biological structure of the species. It would be all but
impossible to explain such a thing through any account involving
natural selection. We could not plausibly explain such a thing merely
by saying that such an adaption increased the survival value of the
species that had it – because we would still have the question of
why such a hard-to-achieve result had been obtained by evolution
rather than some other simpler adaption which would have achieved the
same degree of survival advantage in a way that would have been so
much easier to achieve. Exactly the same problem exists with
explaining the origin of human intelligence by using an explanation
of natural selection.
What
I am suggesting here is that according to Darwinism, the evolution of
intelligence is not at all something that we should expect, but is
instead some strange fluke. Exactly the same thing has been suggested
by some of the leading evolutionary theorists. George Gaylord
Simpson wrote an essay called “The Nonprevalance of Humanoids,”
suggesting that the evolution of beings like us was some rare fluke
we should not expect to see repeated in the accessible universe.
Ernst Mawr (another leading Darwinist) argued that the appearance of
intelligence was a rare fluke, and that it is highly unlikely that
alien life has achieved intelligence.
Comments
such as these by leading Darwinists strongly suggest that Darwinism
does not offer a plausible account of the origin of human
intelligence. Generally speaking, you only offer a plausible explanation of something
when you offer some explanation under which such a thing is likely.
Consider
a trial in which the prosecution is arguing that someone named John
killed his wife. Imagine if the prosecution shows that (a) John had a
violent temper; (b) John had $500,000 in gambling debts which he owed
to a crime syndicate; (c) John had a million dollar life insurance
policy on his wife; and (d) John had just become enraged after
finding out his wife was committing adultery. This would all add up to a good
start in a plausible case for showing John killed his wife. Under
such conditions, we might expect that someone like John would have
killed his wife. But imagine the prosecution merely suggested that it
was some strange fluke, and that John had killed his wife just
because he didn't like the clothes she was wearing on the day she was
murdered. That would not be a plausible explanation for a murder,
because it would not be a set of conditions under which such a murder
would be likely.
Similarly,
if Darwinists cannot give us a situation under which the evolution of
intelligence is likely under Darwinist principles, they have not
provided a plausible explanation of the origin of human intelligence.
You do not give a plausible explanation of something if you describe
it as being a strange rare fluke under your theoretical framework,
something we would be unlikely to see again on any of millions of
other planets.
This
difficulty was recognized by Alfred Russel Wallace, who developed the
theory of evolution at the same time as Darwin. Talking about the
human brain (which is about three times heavier than a gorilla
brain), Wallace wrote the following (quoted in section 5.8 of this interesting work):
A brain one-half larger
than that of the gorilla would....fully have sufficed for the limited
mental development of the savage; and we must therefore admit that
the large brain he actually possesses could never have been solely
developed by any of those laws of evolution, whose essence is, that
they lead to a degree of organization exactly proportionate to the
wants of each species, never beyond those wants...Natural selection
could only have endowed savage man with a brain a few degrees
superior to that of an ape, whereas he actually possesses one very
little inferior to that of a philosopher.
Upon
reading this passage, Darwin wrote to Wallace: “I hope you have not
murdered too completely your own and my child.” Darwin need not have worried about such an objection murdering the whole theory of evolution, but should indeed have wondered whether it threw doubt on the idea that natural selection is the main cause of evolution.
We
need to start pondering explanations of the origin of human
intelligence which describe a situation under which the appearance of
human intelligence is a likely event rather than some incredibly
improbable fluke. No theory that describes the origin of human
intelligence as some strange improbable fluke can claim to have
offered a plausible account of the origin of human intelligence.
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