"Why don't you write about evolution?" Every once in a while I get a smug letter (containing far more than this phrase to indicate the smugness, as a note to the literarily impaired looking to impugn my honesty, and unless they have been reading my correspondence, have nothing to say on the subject) from some skeptic or another asking me this question. I'd like to at least give them a point for consistency: Those who believe that it is possible to become an expert commentator on Hebrew exegetical and literary methods merely by reading Thomas Paine would no doubt think it likewise possible for me to become an instant expert on creation/evolution issues by merely picking up Dawkins' Blind Watchmaker and From Goo to You by Way of the Zoo. Unlike these Skeptics, I respect the knowledge of those more informed than I am (as in the hard sciences) and do not presume to know their stuff better than they do. (For clarity let me put in here that by "evolution" I mean what is commonly called "macroevolution" -- not "microevolution." I.e., dogs bred from wolves is OK; dogs from reptiles isn't.)

That said, we are certain that skeptics have speculated a certain cognitive dissonance on my part where evolution is concerned. Not a bit of it. The reason I do not buy or sell the evolution story is that while I cannot comment upon the "hard science" issues, when it comes to things I do know, it is all too clear that the strongest promoters of evolutionary theory could simply not reason their way out of a paper bag, even one with arrows painted inside in bright neon and a tour guide pointing to the exit. I obviously do not have the science knowledge to know whether or not evolution is true. But here is what I see: Evolutionists often explain evolution by analogy, and they are often clearly poor analogies. One of these illustrates evolution via the development of the automobile. (This was apparently originated by a writer named Berra, and the date it was used does not make it any more or less authentic.) Excuse me? How can evolutionists not see that this is all wrong for what they want to prove? Each of these devices was put together by an intelligent designer, separately. The analogy only proves a theory of special creation, not naturalistic evolution! While it would no doubt be protested that this is not the point, it is a point that to blindly use such an analogy in the first place demonstrates a clear lack of critical/analytical thinking. This is not any more a matter of "knowledge" which I should and will respect, but of simple, analytical thinking.

In order to illustrate my own dissatisfaction with evolutionary arguments, I would like to offer two more examples of just such illogic in action, both from the work of one of the leading drum-pounders of evolutionary theory, Richard Dawkins. The first example comes from pages 51-2 of the paperback edition of The Selfish Gene. Dawkins pulls in an analogy of a chess-playing computer working, and of the relation is has to a human programmer:

...[The programmer] is definitely not manipulating the computer from moment to moment, like a puppeteer pulling strings...He writes the program, puts it in the computer, and then the computer is on its own...Does the programmer perhaps anticipate all possible chess positions, and provide the computer with a long list of good moves, one for each possible contingency? Most certainly not, because the number of possible positions in chess is so great that the world would come to an end before the list had been completed. For the same reason, the computer cannot possibly be programmed to try out 'in its head' all possible moves, and possible follow-ups, until it finds a winning strategy. There are more possible chess games than there are atoms in the galaxy...

The programmer's actual role is rather more like that of a father teaching his son to play chess. He tells the computer the basic moves of the game, not separately from every possible starting position, but in terms of more economically expressed rules...When it is actually playing, the computer is on its own, and can expect no help from its master.

This, Dawkins uses to illustrate his thesis of genes controlling the behavior of their hosts, but the analogy has passed by rather too quickly here. He is quite right about the programming methods, but far too simplistic: as with the automobile analogy, it proves exactly the opposite of what he wants. The chess computer (gene!) had an intelligent programmer. This site offers a description of just what it is that such programs do. What Dawkins sums up as "basic moves of the game" and "economically expressed rules" actually amounts to giving the computer these tools: Opening library, Ply search depth, Alphabeta minimax maethod, Database of opening moves, Database of midgame positions (limited), Database of endgame positions, Evaluative functions (an understanding of the importance of) relating to: Pawn structure; Material Capture; Piece Mobility; King Safety; Domination of centre of the board. "Basic moves of the game"? This is like saying giving someone, somehow, the skills of a Dale Earnhardt, Jr. amounts to giving them "basic rules about driving."

Our second and last example, I draw from The Blind Watchmaker [80]. The work as a whole runs upon a premise of an immensely begged question (evolution must have taken place, because here we are), but one example in particular has always struck me as the disconnected lynchpin of evolutionary thinking. In answering charges that the slightest error in the evolution of an eye would cause problems and lead to a failure in natural selection, Dawkins writes:

The odds cannot be far from 50/50 that you are reading these words through glass lenses. Take them off and look around. Would you agree that 'a recognizable image is not formed'? If you are male the odds are about 1 in 12 that you are colorblind. You may well be astigmatic. It is not unlikely that, without glasses, your vision is a misty blur. One of today's most distinguished...evolutionary theorists so seldom cleans his glasses that his vision is probably a misty blur anyway, but he seems to get along pretty well and, by his own account, he used to play a mean game of monocular squash.

Anecdotal squash games aside, what is wrong with this picture? Every person Dawkins writes to here has been living for years -- in most cases with previously perfect or sufficient vision -- and has developed other mechanisms, and gained familiarity with the world and circumstances in the meantime, that the loss or corruption of eyesight merely makes less convenient to whatever degree. His friend has been playing squash for years and had finely honed reflexes, a fit enough body, a fully developed mind, and knowledge of the game and its strategies. A creature in the wild who managed to evolve vision for the first time (and never mind that it would be far, far from being as useful as the weakened vision of most of Dawkins' readers, to say nothing of other biological matters beyond my ken) won't be selected unless its vision is accompanied by other traits already in place, and where did those come from, since they too can't be selected without accompanying traits? A creature with a new gift of vision also needs the ability to process what it sees and react accordingly. What if we were to take Dawkins' friend off the squash court and place him, naked and defenseless, deprived of all his other senses, on another planet filled with beasts and conditions he had never seen before (whereas his friend had seen squash courts for years, and we ourselves have years of experience in knowing to be more cautious in unfamiliar surroundings)? I could say more, including commenting on the absurdity of pointing to lack of function as evidence for evolution (as in the example of cave organisms "devolving" and losing their eyes -- how do steps backwards prove steps forwards?!?), but the point is, Dawkins has it backwards for what he is trying to prove.

Therefore, skeptics, I say unto you: Don't ask me to write about evolution. If this is the best sort of thinking your side has to offer, I find little to be cognitively dissonant about.

A critic responds! See here. Note as well for the screamer in the readership: The Grigg/Hoyle analogy was used for (the analogy of) the creation of life by CMI -- not for "evolution" or natural selection.