It is amazing how little honest progress has been made in the thinking of scientists about evolution. Since the time of Darwin in the 19th century, there has occurred basically no honest progress in the explanation that evolutionary biologists give to explain the wonders of biology.
There did occur quite a lot of what can be called "dishonest progress" in the narrative of evolutionary biologists. The "dishonest progress" occurred around the middle of the twentieth century by the creation of a phony story that each human has within each of his cells a DNA blueprint for how to build the human body. Such a thing might have been called a recipe or a program or a specification for making the human body. The bogus story that started to be told around the year 1950 was that each human has in his DNA a specification for making the human body. This idea was linked in to evolution theory. We were told that evolution occurs by the modification of such a DNA blueprint. So, according to this story, the reason why some chimp-like species changed gradually to become our species is that over many years there was a gradual change in DNA.
The "DNA as body blueprint" story was all a big lie, one of the most appalling lies that human beings have ever told. There never was the slightest evidence that DNA has a blueprint, a recipe, a program or a specification for making a human body. All that ever was discovered in DNA was low-level chemical information, such as which amino acids are contained in particular protein molecules. By now the contents of DNA have been very thoroughly analyzed by major multi-year projects such as the Human Genome Project, and no one ever found in DNA or its genes anything like a blueprint, a recipe, a program or a specification for making a human body or any of its organs or cells. The fact that DNA is not any blueprint, recipe or program for making a human body has been confessed by dozens of biology and chemistry authorities I quote at the end of my post here.
The idea that human bodies get built by the reading of a DNA blueprint was always a very childish lie, for the simple reason that blueprints don't build things. Things get built using blueprints only when intelligent agents use blueprints to get ideas about how to build things. Why did so many of the population buy the childish myth that human bodies arise from the reading of a DNA blueprint? Because nowadays scientists are the priests of our culture, and people will believe the most childish myths when such stories are told by scientists.
Excluding the lie that the bodies of organisms arise from the reading of DNA blueprints, a narrative that can be called "dishonest progress," there has been no appreciable honest progress in the story that biologists tell when trying to explain how evolution could produce the wonders of biology. I could insert here quotes from the writings of many biologists attempting to explain how evolution could have produced the wonders of biology, quotes in which they are attempting to use explanations that are basically the same as Charles Darwin offered in 1859. Human knowledge of the facts of biology has made the most dramatic leaps forward since 1859, but biologists are still using an 1859 explanation for how we got here. It's kind of like the situation that would exist if you went into a modern hospital feeling very sick, and the doctors said, "You have too much blood -- we will get leeches to suck out some of your blood," as doctors might have done hundreds of years ago.
The original Darwinian explanation of evolution relies very much on a vague use of the word "variations." The explanation goes like this:
"(1) When new members of a species are born, there are variations, with some members being different.
(2) If a member of a species is born with a useful variation that increases his chance of survival and reproduction, that member will be more likely to survive and reproduce.
(3) Therefore useful variations will tend to be preserved, and a species may gradually accumulate useful variations that gradually occurred over many years.
(4) By the accumulation of such variations, nature produces new species that have new features and nature produces new wonders of biology such as new types of organs and new types of appendages."
There are certain key features that we almost always find in these types of explanations:
(1) Almost always the person giving the explanation fails to describe the enormous organization and functional complexity of organisms. We will not be told the all-important truth that substantive innovation in biological organisms requires new types of very complex inventions which typically require a special arrangement of very many parts.
(2) Almost always the person giving the explanation fails to speak precisely about biological variations, and uses that term in the wooliest and vaguest way.
Let us take a precise look at biological variations. The idea can be best understand using the modern mathematical idea of a bell-shaped curve. A bell-shaped curve (also called a normal distribution) is a curve plotting variations from an average. Below is a graph roughly representing variations in human male height.
You could create similar graphs for various human attributes: weight, speed, intelligence, vision ability and so forth. When a new member of a species is born, it may have some particular attribute that is somewhere on such a bell-shaped curve. Such things can be called biological variations.
Do such variations help to explain the appearance of new wonders in biology? No, they don't. The reason is that new wonders of biology require complex biological innovations, or what can be called complex biological inventions. Complex biological inventions require very special new arrangements of very many parts, to achieve some particular end. Such things cannot be yielded by mere biological variations.
Let us look at some of the types of biological inventions that have appeared in the history of our planet:
(1) One major type of biological invention is a new type of protein molecule. Within the human body are more than 20,000 different types of protein molecules, each a separate type of very complex invention requiring a special new arrangement of thousands of atoms.
(2) Another major type of biological invention are protein complexes which may consist of quite a few different types of protein molecules arranged in a special way to achieve some biological end. Many of these protein complexes are so complex and machine-like that nowadays the term "molecular machines" is being widely used for them.
(3) Another major type of biological invention is a new type of organelle. Organelles are the major functional components of cells
(4) Another major type of biological invention is a new type of cell. The human body has more than 200 types of cells, each an extremely complex type of biological invention. Cells are so complex that they are often compared to factories.
(5) Another major type of biological invention is an anatomic innovation, such as a new type of organ or a new type of functional appendage.
Such complex biological innovations would be necessary for any major type of evolution. But can biological variations in one generation explain such complex biological inventions? Not at all. You never get a new type of complex biological invention from random variations in a single generation. Complex biological inventions require very special arrangements of thousands of atoms, and such things do not occur from random variations, just as ink splashes never produce functional paragraphs or even functional sentences.
So, for example, let us imagine that there is a species that does not have a particular type of functional protein molecule that the world has never seen. It is inconceivable that by some random variation in one organism of that species there would occur the first appearance of such a protein molecule. Such a thing would have an improbability as great as the improbability of an ink splash producing a well-written grammatical and functional paragraph of text.
Similarly, since cells involve organizations of matter that involve special arrangements of enormously more atoms than are required to make proteins, it is inconceivable that some mere random biological variation would create a new type of cell. If the improbability of a new type of functional protein arising from some random variation is like the improbability of a functional well-written paragraph arising from an ink splash, the improbability of a new type of cell arising from a random variation is like the improbability of an ink splash producing a long well-written essay of many pages.
But could we imagine a smaller result from random biological variations -- something such as perhaps a tenth of a complex biological innovation? Even this idea becomes unbelievable when we consider the complexity of complex biological innovations. Complex biological innovations that add to the survival value of an organism require a huge number of changes that must be coordinated. Consider, for example, the addition of a useful new limb or appendage on an organism, such as an arm, a leg or a wing. That requires very many bone changes and muscle changes and very many changes on the level of very complex biochemistry such as proteins, protein complexes, organelles and cells. Getting even a tenth of what is needed for a complex biological innovation is something that would never occur from mere random variations. That would be as improbable as an ink splash producing a tenth of a book or a tenth of a well-written essay of many paragraphs.
And if such a tenth of a complex biological innovation were to somehow be produced by some miracle of chance, as a random change in an individual organism of a species, no improvement in reproduction or survival would occur. So the tenth-of-a-biological-invention would never tend to spread throughout the population of the species.
The chart below helps to clarify the situation. If a random variation were to produce a tenth of a complex biological innovation, that would be equivalent to merely getting one tenth of the red line at bottom. Being very far from meeting the functional threshold (the minimum number of parts and coordination of those parts needed for a survival benefit), no benefit would be produced. So the tenth-of-a-biological-innovation would not tend to spread from the organism where it occurred to a significant fraction of the population.
Part of the reason why biological variations in one generation cannot even yield a tenth of a complex survival-improving biological innovation is because of the gigantic amount of interdependence within the bodies of organisms. In 99% of cases, the first-time origination of a new type of protein will do nothing by itself to improve survival in an organism. In 99% of cases a new type of cell will do nothing by itself to improve survival in an organism. Survival-improving biological innovations almost always require a coordination of innovations in multiple places. The diagram below illustrates the point.
The diagram below illustrates the same point. A biological variation might produce a fraction of one of the components in such a system (represented below by a single circle), but that would not produce by itself a survival improvement. What is needed is a whole system filled with interdependent components working together.
So how is it that so many were fooled into believing that the origin of complex new survival-improving biological innovations could be explained by random variations and random mutations? The answer is that people were fooled because they allowed writers to get away with using "conceal the complexity" kind of language. Instead of being described as extremely complex innovations requiring a very special organization of many hundreds or thousands of parts, writers described new features in organisms as mere "variations." Those who were fooled by these accounts failed to "throw a flag" on such writers by pointing out their failure to accurately describe the vast levels of organizational and functional complexity and component interdependence in biological organisms.
Recently some article appeared in some scientific magazine trying to sell the silly doctrine of panpsychism, the idea that all matter is conscious. It seems that quite a few "mainstream thinkers" in the scientific community posted bitter comments denouncing the article. There is a rich irony in that, because the tricks of language involved in arguing for panpsychism are very similar to the tricks of language involved in arguing for the Darwinism that is so beloved by "mainstream thinkers" in the scientific community.
Arguments for panpsychism almost always sound the same, as if every writer was copying the original argument, making only minor variations. A typical argument for panpsychism will start out by presenting a ridiculously diminutive description of the human mind and human mental experiences, which will be described as merely "consciousness." It will be said that humans have a "property" of being conscious, something that neuroscience fails to explain. It will then be argued that this "property" of consciousness is a property of all matter, just as things such as height, width, depth, volume and mass are properties of matter.
Such argumentation involves the most grotesque oversimplification and the most glaring diminutive misrepresentation, a kind of shadow-speaking in which realities of oceanic depth are described as if they mere shadows of themselves, something as bad as describing a huge library as "some paper with ink marks" and as bad as describing World War II as "some noise that went on." Human minds and human mental experiences are a reality of oceanic depth, something almost infinitely more rich and complicated than mere "consciousness." Once we properly describe the human mind and human mental experiences, we can see how pathetic and ridiculous is the idea that we can explain the human mind by describing it as a mere "property." The explanatory shortfall of today's neuroscientists is not merely that they have failed to credibly explain some mere fact of humans being conscious. Their explanatory shortfall is a million times larger, being that they have failed to credibly explain a hundred undisputed aspects and capabilities of the human mind (such as memory creation, memory recall, life-long memory preservation, insight, spirituality, imagination, self-hood and thinking), as well as countless other disputed but well-documented aspects and capabilities of the human mind (such as ESP and out-of-body experiences), none of which are credibly explicable as being the result of brain activity.
Just as arguments for panpsychism involve the most grotesque oversimplification and the most glaring diminutive misrepresentation, a kind of shadow-speaking in which realities are described as if they are mere shadows of themselves, the standard explanation of Darwinism requires a kind of shadow-speaking that relies on very misleading misrepresentations in which things are described as if they are a million times simpler than they are. Trying to explain the most impressive biological innovations that typically involve as many well-arranged parts as found in an automobile engine, the Darwinist refers to such things as mere "biological variations." We seem to never get in such expositions of Darwinist theory an accurate description of the realities of biological organization and biological complexity. We are never told about how complex biological innovations require many hundreds or many thousands of well-arranged parts. Just as the panpsychist uses the crudest, laziest "crayon sketch" in describing human minds, the Darwinist uses the crudest, laziest "crayon sketch" in describing biological innovations, utterly failing to realistically describe the vast amount of organization, coordination and fine-tuning needed to produce such marvels of innovation.
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