Darwin's Proof, part 2

This is the third in my posts dissecting Darwin's Proof by Cornelius G. Hunter. Chapter 3 is titled Swallowing a Camel: the fundamental argument against evolution, part 2. The title differs from chapter 2 in only one word, and the content is the same. I am not sure why this material was put in a separate, short chapter. The argument is the same and even the examples are basically the same. In chapter 2, Hunter described the complexity of cellular processes with an emphasis on how proteins are made--transcription, translation, and gene regulation. I guess here he shows how complicated those proteins are. He actually did that in chapter 2, since transcription, translation, and gene regulation depend on proteins.

First he discusses enzymes and how much faster they make reactions go and how specific they are. That is his argument. He points out that proteases differ in specificity, as if this is a mystery. Different proteases have differences in typically one or two amino acids at the active site to change their specificity, there is no problem for evolution there.

He says that enzymes are yet another mystery to solve when in fact this is one of the easiest of all to explain. We have evolved enzymes in vitro using nothing but mutation and selection. Some of the best examples are ribozymes that have been selected to catalyze various reactions. We can also make antibodies that act as enzymes by creating antibodies against transition states. Antibodies arise completely by chance. We have seen frameshift mutations give rise to new enzymes (nylonase) and random open reading frames in noncoding RNA give rise to functional proteins.

He then shifts the goal posts from how an enzyme could evolve to how it could fit into a pathway, implying that there is no way to add on to an existing pathway. We have numerous examples of adding reactions to existing pathways, such as the C4 photosynthetic pathway which utilizes already existing enzymes in a new path. He says an enzyme can only evolve if there is a need for it, which isn't quite right. A new enzyme can arise by chance, for example by gene duplication, and it just happens to be useful and evolves new functions. The origination is not based on need, and its success is better described as based on usefulness, not need.

He is aware of gene families but avoids that by asking how the first enzyme in the gene family arose. He seems to think the first member had to arise all at once. Hunter seems unable to think in terms of gradual improvements and changes in functions. Many gene families are part of even larger gene families. I already discussed how frameshifts and random ORFs can give rise to new proteins.

Hunter discusses other things, such as enzyme pathways, ion channels, and hemoglobin in the same way. He simply describes how specific or fast or complex they are, and feels he has made the fundamental argument against evolution. He discusses allosteric regulation of enzymes but seems incapable of thinking that the enzymes and pathways would still have functioned, though less efficiently, without the allosteric regulation. We have seen the evolution of regulation of enzyme activity in bacterial populations in the lab. He discusses the cooperative regulation of hemoglobin (indirectly) and fails to mention there are members of the hemoglobin family, such as myoglobin, that lack cooperativity.

When an explanation is available, he demands "detailed and specific accounts". It is clear that no matter how much detail is shown, it won't be detailed enough unless every single step is recreated. Since we have evolved enzymes in the lab, it seems even that has been supplied, but he still isn't convinced (or is unaware of these experiments).

He then says that aside from vague hypothesis that have more speculation than hard fact, evolutionists have no idea how such machines could come about by unguided forces of nature. In one sentence he dismisses tens of thousands of papers. The evolution of the hemoglobin family alone has thousands of papers. We have detailed accounts of the evolution of hormone receptors, of the Krebs cycle, of blood clotting cascades, etc. His dismissal is amazing.

At one point, he says that nothing, from clothing to cars, self assemble, even though in the previous chapter he had explain how protein, in fact, self assemble, as do many other cellular structures.

I should point out that all of his examples are at the biochemical level and had mostly evolved by 2.5 billion years ago. It is more difficult to determine the origin of these things. Most of the evidence for evolution doesn't work with biochemistry--we can't use biogeography, comparative anatomy, fossils, comparative development, etc. We basically just have comparative biochemistry and artificial selection experiments. Even with only these tools, we have a decent answer for how many enzymes arose, considering the evolution happened billions of years ago. In some ways, his argument is like the standard creationists confusion of the origin of life with evolution of life. In this case, it is the origin of the first cell with the evolution of life. Even if we granted him absolutely everything, the most he has is that a bacterial cell is hard to explain by evolution (and he fails at that). We still have the overwhelming evidence that the first cell gave rise to all of the other life on earth.

This chapter has almost no arguments, just a description of complexity and dismissal of the evidence. It is in the final page that Hunter gets rather bizarre again. He says that Darwin had no decent explanation for how evolution created complexity, so he shifted the burden of proof and simply argued that there is no evidence against evolution, therefore we must accept it. The irony is hard to take: he claims that evolution is based entirely on negative arguments and arguments from ignorance, even though his entire case is negative arguments and arguments from ignorance.

First, Darwin never really discussed "complexity" as such, but he did discuss complex structures, which I assume is what Hunter means. Has he ever read Origin of Species? Every page is loaded with observations that support evolution. Darwin never makes an argument from ignorance but instead supports his case with meticulous detail. The closest Hunter can come is when Darwin said that if a structure could be found that could not arise by small steps, his theory would break down. He uses one quote, in which Darwin showed how his theory could be falsified, to claim that all Darwin did is say, if you can't disprove it, it must be true. Darwin did much more than make that claim. He provided massive positive evidence that in fact organs had evolved.

Hunter then claims there is abundant negative evidence against evolution, although he has not shown us any. Instead he says that our fundamental understanding of the world inform us that spontaneous evolution is unlikely. Since when? That is what we are trying to determine. Hunter uses spontaneous and "on its own" repeatedly in these chapters to describe evolution, when in fact no one claims structures arise spontaneously or on its own.

Hunter repeatedly states there is no empirical evidence for evolution and says that evolution is accepted as a default explanation because it is naturalistic and cannot be disproven. The ease with which he dismisses hundreds of thousands of studies supporting evolution or the massive accumulation of evidence in the Origin of Species is amazing. This is especially so since he does not engage the scientific literature at all. He has absolutely no references or citations for these two chapters other than the few places he takes direct quotes, from textbooks. If Hunter is going to dismiss a hundred years of research, he should at least show he has read more than an introductory genetics textbook.

So the "fundamental argument against evolution" is that cells are complex. That is these two chapters in a nutshell. It is simply Micheal Behe's thesis in Darwin's Black Box. Since Cornelius G. Hunter cannot imagine how this complexity arose by evolution, it did not. All studies explaining evolution are dismissed as speculation. One suspect that anything short of evolving a cell in a test tube would be dismissed. Hunter seems unable to use inference from pieces of evidence to a larger picture.