Examining Evolution Theory

July 30, 1985|The Morning Call

To the Editor:

This is a response to the letters by George Gerhab and David Josar, which were responses to an earlier letter by Curtis Koch.

Mr. Gerhab said that Mr. Koch was in error in claiming that evolution violates the laws of thermodynamics. Mr. Gerhab says that these laws are applicable only in closed systems, with no outside sources of energy involved.

It is Mr. Gerhab who is in error. The existence of an outside source of energy is somewhat irrelevant, because a blueprint for the use of energy must exist to harness incoming energy as a constructive force, or the energy introduced promotes as much order as a bull in a china shop. The blueprint involved would be an intelligent design to put the organic pieces in working arrangement when energy was made available. It is the absence of such a blueprint that makes the addition of energy alone insufficient to generate complex forms from simple ones.

Ilya Prigogine won the 1977 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his analysis of the applicability of the second law of thermodynamics to evolution in open systems. Prigogine wrote, "This principle (of ordering) cannot explain the formation of biological structures. The probability that at ordinary temperatures a macroscopic number of molecules is assembled to give rise to the highly ordered structures and to the coordinated functions characterizing living organisms is vanishingly small."

Mr. Gerhab closed his letter by citing variations between examples (poodles and wolves) of a single interbreeding type of animal as proof that wholly separate breeding groups have evolved one from another (men from apes).

Mr. Gerhab's "proof" is unpersuasive. Mr. Josar's proof doesn't exist.

To Mr. Josar, Darwinism liberates humanity from the bondage of religions that are powerless to explain the origin of life without the use of fairy tales.

Mr. Josar assures us that man "was able to prove" the theory of evolution and that scientists have discovered "literally thousands of examples of evolution."

Norman Macbeth has written, "Darwinism has failed in practice. The whole aim and purpose of Darwinism is to show how modern forms descended from ancient forms, that is, to construct reliable phylogenies. In this it has utterly failed."

Pierre P. Grasse, ex-president of the French Academie des Sciences, said he intends to "destroy the myth of evolution as a simple, understood, and explained phenomenon." He also called Darwinism a "fairy tale for adults."

Perhaps the Darwinist faithful should re-examine the presuppositions and prejudices that undergird their philosophical system.

Wyck Clark


Morning Call Articles