For Insight on Why Gradualism Does Not Work, Ponder the Building of a Stone House

 Biologists teach the doctrine of gradualism, the idea that every species appeared because of very many tiny random changes that gradually took place over long periods of time. There are several very large reasons why gradualism is not a credible general theory of biological origins.  One of the biggest is that gradualism fails to explain why any useless early stage would appear in a population of organisms. 

In general Darwinism fails to explain the first stages of useful structures. This was pointed out very clearly in Darwin's time by the biologist Mivart, who wrote the following at the beginning of Chapter II of his book On the Genesis of Species: "Natural Selection utterly fails to account for the conservation and development of the minute and rudimentary beginnings, the slight and infinitesimal commencements of structures, however useful those structures may later become."  Mivart devoted Chapter II of that book to many examples of "incipient stages" that Darwinism could not explain well, including the first small part of any limb such as an arm or leg or the first small part of a wing or the first small part of a mammary gland.

Darwinists have told many a tall tale to try to account for such things, such as suggesting that maybe wings grew out of wing stumps that were used to catch insects. Such tales are typically unbelievable.  Two of the attempts that Darwin made to suggest such stories are now believed to be erroneous (biologists now reject his "maybe mammals come from marsupials" explanation for the incipient stages of mammary glands, and also reject his "lungs come from swim bladders" explanation for the incipient stages of lungs). 

Consider the case of the biological implementation needed to produce vision. We can call this a vision system, and it requires much more than just an eye. Below are four requirements of a vision system.

1. Some type of eye.
2. An optic nerve leading from the eye to the brain.
3. Extremely complicated proteins used to capture light, such as rhodopsin.
4. Very complex brain changes needed to allow for a vision effect that is useful for an organism.

Now if an organism had only or two of these things, it would receive no benefit. For example, merely having an eye and an optic nerve would not be useful unless the eye had the protein molecules needed for vision, and unless the eye also connected to changes in a brain needed to make use of visual inputs. And if there were only such proteins and such brain changes, and no eye and no optic nerve, that would not be beneficial.

The general principle that the first stages of a complex implementation are not beneficial can be stated as the principle of preliminary implementations. We can state this principle like this:

The principle of preliminary implementations: in almost all cases, with few exceptions, preliminary or fragmentary implementations of very complex organized things by themselves yield no benefits or rewards.

This principle holds true in general life, and also in regard to biological implementations. So if we are speaking of some complex biological innovation requiring a certain number of parts organized in the right way, we should not at all assume that the first stages of such an innovation will provide a benefit. A benefit will occur only when a certain degree of complexity and functional coherence has been achieved. In other words, no benefit will come unless some functional threshold has been reached. Such a functional threshold will typically require that several or many parts are arranged in the right way. The diagram below illustrates the point.

The same principle is illustrated by the diagram below:

The reason why Darwin's ideas do not work to credibly explain the origin of biological innovations was rather well explained by scientist Gustave Geley in his monumental work From the Unconscious to the Conscious.  He mentioned "embryonic organs" that are "merely adumbrated" to refer to some mere useless preliminary fragment of an organ. He stated the following: 

"It is not difficult to show that neither the Darwinian 

nor the Lamarckian hypothesis enables us to understand 

the origin of characteristics that constitute a new 

species...In order that any given modification occurring in 

the characteristics of a species or an individual, should 

give to that species or to that individual an appreciable 

advantage in the struggle for life, it is evident that this 

modification must be sufficiently marked to be utilizable. 

Now an embryonic organ, a modification merely 

adumbrated, appearing by chance in a being or a group 

of beings, can be of no practical use and give them no 

advantage....Now an embryonic 

wing, appearing by chance, one knows neither how nor 

why, in the ancestral reptile, could not give that reptile 

the capacity or the advantage of flight, and would give 

it no superiority over other reptiles unprovided with the 

unusable rudiment. It is therefore impossible to attribute 

to natural selection the transition from reptile to bird. 

...Rudiments of legs and lungs would give no 

advantage to a fish...It is  indispensable that its heart, lungs, and organs of locomotion should be already sufficiently developed to allow it to live out of the water."

We can imagine some useless early stage of a useful innovation appearing in a single member of a species because of some random variation. But because such a useless early stage would provide no survival value, it would not spread around from a single organism to reach most members of a species in subsequent generations in a "selective sweep" occurring because of "survival of the fittest" reasons. 

In fact, useless early stages would often be not just useless but actually detrimental to the survival chances of an organism.  An example would be a not-yet functional appendage that was the beginning of a wing.  Such an appendage would slow down an organism that had it, and make an easy target for predators to bite.  Another example would be a rudimentary not-yet-functional eye lens, which would tend to block light and reduce sight until it became a sophisticated functional lens. 

Darwin attempted to answer the problem of useless early stages by speculating on some examples of useful early stages. But far from being answered by his speculations, the problem of useless early stages has grown gigantically larger after Darwin because of what we have discovered about the great complexity and fragility of protein molecules, something Darwin never knew about. We now know that the animal kingdom contains more than a billion different types of protein molecules, each its own separate complex invention, each typically requiring hundreds of amino acids that have to be arranged in just the right way for the molecule to be functional.  In the human body there are more than 20,000 different types of protein molecules, each its own separate complex invention. Experiments have repeatedly shown that protein molecules are fragile, and become nonfunctional when only a small fraction of their amino acids are removed.  A biology textbook tells us, "Proteins are so precisely built that the change of even a few atoms in one amino acid can sometimes disrupt the structure of the whole molecule so severely that all function is lost." And we read on a science site, "Folded proteins are actually fragile structures, which can easily denature, or unfold." Another science site tells us, "Proteins are fragile molecules that are remarkably sensitive to changes in structure." Protein molecules are not functional if only a half or a third of their amino acids exist.  Typically we have no credible explanation for why the first half or the first third of any protein molecule would have ever originated. So what we have learned about protein molecules causes the problem of useless early stages to loom a hundred times larger than it did in Darwin's time. 

Besides protein molecules that are not useful when only half of the molecule exists, there are countless larger features of organisms that are not useful when only half of such features exist.  Some of these features are mentioned by biologist , Richard Goldschmidt, who wrote the following on page 6 of his book The Material Basis of Evolution:

"I may challenge the adherents of the strictly Darwinian view, which we are discussing here, to try to explain the evolution of the following features by accumulation and selection of small mutants: hair in mammals, feathers in birds, segmentation of arthropods and vertebrates, the transformation of gill arches in phylogeny, including the aortic arches, muscles, nerves, etc.; further, teeth, shells of mollusks, ectoskeletons, compound eyes, blood circulation, alternation of generations, statocysts, ambulacral system of echinoderms, pedicellaria of the same, cnidocysts, poison apparatus of snakes, whalebone, and, finally, primary chemical differences like hemoglobin vs. hemocyanin, etc. Corresponding examples from plants could be given.” 

To help clarify why gradualism is not a credible theory of biological origins, it may help to imagine yourself in a particular situation in which you are trying to improve your survival prospects. Imagine you are some human living 20,000 years ago, in Africa. Imagine that you have the problem that predators such as lions sometimes arrive, to kill and eat the members of your little human group. It would be nice if you could live in a cave for protection. But unfortunately in your area there are no caves. 

So you devise an ingenious plan for improving your survival prospects. You decide to build yourself a house for your protection. But you lack any tools such as a saw or a hammer. How can you build the house? 

Eventually, you get a brilliant idea. You can build the house by simply gathering large stones, and piling them up to make walls. So you get started. It is difficult work, and takes a long time. After many days you have the first fraction of your stone house:

You have gathered more than 100 different parts (each a stone), and arranged them in the right way to produce a wall. However, despite all of this effort, you do not have anything that will increase your likelihood of survival. A single wall does not protect you from predators. 

So now you work much longer. Working many additional days, you create two more walls. You have now gathered more than 300 different large stones, and arranged them in a special way, to make three of the four walls of your stone house. But you still have nothing that improves your likelihood of survival. Predators can still easily get inside the structure, to attack and eat anyone trying to hide inside it. 

So now you do the remaining work necessary to make your house a safe place of refuge. You add the final wall. Doing this part is tricky, because you cannot simply build another wall like the three walls you have previously built. You have to build a wall that includes some kind of door. Building the door requires using some material other than just stones. 

Finally, after doing all of this work, and after carefully assembling more than 400 different parts, arranging them all in just the right way, you finally have something that improves your likelihood of survival. You can sleep in such a structure at night. If you built the walls high enough, and built the door right, you can be sure that no lion will be able to attack you while you sleep, and that no lion will be able to get inside the structure. If you see a lion on the horizon, you can run inside your stone house for protection. 

But this effect of improved survival value was one that only appeared very late in the construction of the house that you built. It certainly was not true that you got 10% of the survival benefit after building 10% of the house; and it was not true that you got 20% of the survival benefit after building 20% of the house. There was a functional threshold that had to be met to get the survival benefit. Until that functional threshold was met, there was no survival benefit. 

And that is just how things work in the world of biology. In general complex innovations do not produce any benefit until late in the construction of such things. This holds true in 95% of all cases. That is part of the reason why gradualism and Darwinism are not credible theories of biological origins. In 95% of the cases, we cannot credibly maintain that some very complex and very organized innovation arose through a series of a large number of changes, each of which produced a benefit (causing such a change to be preserved because of so-called natural selection). In almost all cases, new complex things requiring an arrangement of many parts do not produce any benefit until late in the construction of such things. 

In biology one of the main building components are protein molecules. Inside a human body are more than 20,000 different types of protein molecules, each a separate type of complex invention. Human cells are eukaryotic cells, and it has been estimated that on average a protein molecule in a eukaryotic cell requires about 400 well-arranged amino acids to achieve its functional effect (some types of protein molecules require thousands of well-arranged amino acids). Each type of protein molecule is an invention as hard-to-achieve by chance as a stone house consisting of about 400 well-arranged stones. And just as the house of stones imagined above has no usefulness if it has only three of its walls, almost all protein molecules are very sensitive to small changes, and have no use if you remove 25% of their amino acids (which prevents the molecules from folding in the required way). 

You would be thinking foolishly if you were to ever be walking in nature, and found 400 stones arranged in just the right way to make a house, and thought that this was an arrangement produced by chance, by falling or rolling stones just happening to form into four connected walls, each taller than a man. No such arrangement so-hard-to-achieve would ever accidentally occur in the history of the universe. Believing in Darwinism is rather like someone reviewing more than 20,000 stone houses discovered in some country, and concluding that they were all produced by accidental arrangements of falling or rolling stones. This comparison may be charitable, because while there are more than 20,000 types of protein molecules in a human body (each requiring as many well-arranged parts as in a stone house), the total number of different types of protein molecules in the animal kingdom is probably at least a billion.