Darwin's proof, chapter 4: explaining too little

I've been reviewing Darwin's Proof by Cornelius G. Hunter, chapter by chapter (see here, here, here). Today I will review chapter 4, which is the first of two chapters in which he tries to dismiss the evidence for evolution.

Hunter first deals with the fossil evidence. He misrepresents disagreements about the rate of evolution. He seems to think that those who have argued for faster evolution, from Huxley to Gould, have argued for evolution taking genuine jumps. That is not the case. Instead, they have simply argued that there may be rapid bursts, which nevertheless go through intermediate stages. Some have argued for slightly larger steps, but still nothing more than the difference between two similar species. Hunter tries to firmly put Darwin in an extreme gradualists camp and seems to think that because of this, that's what evolution must believe. A note to all evolution deniers: Darwin got a lot wrong. That's fine with us. If an extreme gradualism of Darwin is 100% wrong, who cares? That's scientific progress. It isn't evidence against common descent. Hunter seems to think that arguments about the rate of evolution call into question common descent itself.

Hunter suggests that uniformitarianists such as Lyell "called for" natural history to be caused by natural laws, rather than that natural laws can explain natural history. It wasn't an a priori requirement. The catastrophists also believed natural forces accounted for the geological record, they simply believed forces not seen every day were required.

Hunter claims that there are out of sequence fossils without identifying them, so I assume he is referring to the same long discredited examples that go back to George McReady Price in the 1920s. In the same paragraph, he misquotes Niles Eldridge, confusing lack of transitions at the species level with a lack of transitions above the species level.

Hunter quotes extensively from Robert Carroll, in Patterns and Processes in Vertebrate Evolution. I looked up the original source, and of course Carroll is misrepresented. Carroll is discussing various ways that patterns at the macroevolutionary level are not simple extrapolations from microevolution. In no way does he suggest the fossil record is a problem for evolution, just that different patterns emerge at different levels. Hunter implies that these are problems for evolution itself. Carroll makes five points, and Hunter misrepresents each one of them.

Hunter does say indirectly that Carroll has answers to these problems, but then says they are not compelling. He does not tell us what they are to let us decide if they are compelling. We are to take his word, and clearly nothing would be compelling to Hunter. The question of course isn't whether the seem compelling, but if they can be tested and what evidence supports it. Our imaginations are not a data point.

Hunter misrepresents punctuated equilibrium, in the usual ways. Creationists need to understand that PE is a theory of microevolution. The lack of fossil transitions are only between two very similar species (although we do have numerous good examples even at that level). There is no claim at all that there is a problem above the species level. Since all creationists accept microevolution and the emergence of new, similar species, their embrace of PE as a problem for evolution is contradictory. Hunter claims that PE lacks details of how the change would occur rapidly, but that was the whole point of PE and it is grounded in several already existing theories of speciation.

Hunter also follows standard creationists tactics in dismissing vestigial organs. He points out we can't be sure if things lack a function and that some still have a function. He does all of that, then admits that vestigial can mean a reduced function, not lack of function. If a salamander has something that clearly looks like an eye, but is blind, it has a vestigial eye. If the eye still serves a few small functions other than vision, it still is vestigial. Creationists use the complexity of the eye as proof of design for vision, so if the salamander can't see, it has the design without the function. Hunter quotes a few biologists who refer to exapted organs as vestigial, such a a penguin using its wings for swimming. I didn't check these quotes. That is not the usual way the term vestigial is used. Exapted organs are great evidence for evolution, but not vestigial. A penguin wing is exapted from the original function, but not vestigial.

Hunter then tries to use examples of convergent evolution against evolution. This is his argument: similarities (homologies) are evidence for evolution, but there are many similar organisms that aren't related. Then evolutionists explain them away as convergent evolution. So if organisms are similar or different, both are evidence for evolution. Biologists try to have it both ways. He uses the example of the convergent evolution of marsupials and placentals: there are moles, wolves, flying squirrels, etc., in both groups. (He also refers to the eyes of two species of frogs, but doesn't even mention the species or how they are similar, leave alone give a reference, so I cannot address that).

This is a basic, biology 101, mistake. Hunter seems completely unaware of the idea of analogous traits or how they are determined. Although at first a Tasmanian wolf and a gray wolf might seem similar, in fact they are very different. Kevin Padian nicely summarized this in his testimony in Kitzmiller versus Dover. He showed how these animals differ in the number of each kind of teeth, in the nasal passages, in the secondary palate, the lower jaw, and many other ways. He then showed how all of these traits are the same between a placental dog and wolf, and between an opossum and a Tasmanian Wolf. Hunter showed a complete lack of understanding on this point. In fact, the pattern of similarities, beyond the superficial, fit well with evolution and don't make any sense without it. Why should a Tasmanian wolf and an opossum be so similar, and a Tasmanian wolf and gray wolf so different?

So far Hunter has had a tendency to save his most glaring mistakes until the end of the chapter, and he doesn't disappoint here. His biggest argument seems to be that evolution explains too much. It explains both when organisms are similar and when they are different. Two replies easily come to mind with this. The first is that obviously any correct theory will do that. Would we accept any theory that explains why organisms are different but fails utterly to explain the similarities? No matter what theory we have, any theory that has been or will be proposed about life, it will try to explain why organisms are similar and why they are different. Any theory that fails in either of these will immediately be rejected.

The second, biggest irony of all, is that ID suffers from the same problem, but much more so. ID also explains all similarities and all differences between organisms (as all theories must). If that is a reason to reject evolution, then it must be a reason to reject ID. The difference is that there are many patterns of similarity that we can imagine that would disprove evolution--for example if similarities didn't fit into a nested pattern. However, there is no imaginable pattern of similarities and differences that could not be explained by ID. Which theory explains too much?

What amazes me in much of this chapter is the utter lack of detail. Hunter makes no attempt to even refer to a single fossil specimen or to any specific traits. It is much easier to dismiss evidence with a sweep of the hand rather than to get into the nitty gritty details. Any scientists knows that all of science is done with the details, so this chapter comes across as almost completely empty. The other thing missing is any attempt to come up with a positive explanation in response to the negative arguments against evolution.