Darwin's Proof, final chapter

I am on the final chapter of Darwin's proof, although there is also an appendix that looks like it will have a very high density of mistakes. I will point out specific errors here, and eventually give a single overall assessment of the book.

Hunter tries to use an analogy to human design again. He points out that in human machines, there are some common elements but that we can also mix and match subsystems from unrelated machines. He says that is what we see in organisms. This could come as a surprise to someone familiar with the diversity of life and how most traits are found in a nested hierarchy, rather than mixing and matching. But you must remember Hunter's misuse of convergent evolution. He again brings up the convergent designs in marsupial and placental mammals. As he sees it, the main difference between them is different reproductive systems, but other than that they use many of the same parts (for example in a marsupial versus placental wolf or mole).

To suggest that a marsupial wolf and placental wolf are basically the same creatures just with a different reproductive subsystem switched in shows a profound ignorance of mammalian biology. The similarities are only superficial. The underlying arrangement of bones, teeth, and other structures clearly shows the two creatures are dramaticaly different. At that level, a marsupial wolf is much more like a kangaroo than a placental wolf, in so many more ways than just reproduction. This same mistake was made in the text Of Pandas and People. Kevin Padian did a wonderful job of showing how completely wrong this is in the Kitzmiller trial in Dover, PA. His slides demonstrating this error are available here. He very convincingly shows that a marsupial wolf is not just a placental wolf with a pouch.

Hunter goes into a long description of the contingent nature of evolution, and as usual, he does a decent job of describing the argument of biologists. He then dismisses all of this by asking how does evolution explain the mix and match we see in nature, if things are contingent on the past? Of course, the answer is that we don't see this mix and match except at a superficial level. The outward appearance of mixing and matching is explained by convergent evolution. Hunter thinks convergent evolution is just an excuse for any patterns we can't explain, but it is most definitely a testable explanation, as Padian's slides make clear.

He says these similarities and differences make perfect sense from a design perspective. Yes, he can explain it as a loose analogy, but can you predict specifically which things will be mixed and matched? Hunter uses his usual language, saying that evolution's explanations are hardly compelling (if you don't look in detail at the evidence, I suppose), and claims that mismatches based on one feature frequently contradict those based on another. Yes, there are a small number of examples of such traits, but it is not frequent, and they are testable using the method of cladistics.

He claims that evolutionists argue against a naive random design hypthesis--that if there was a designer, traits would be randomly mixed together rather than follow a pattern. I have seen no one who uses this naive view. Instead, most argue things do not follow human design principles. Hunter is bringing up a very old problem--that the patterns we see in nature could reflect the patterns in the mind of the designer, rather than patterns produced by evolution. Most biologists are aware of the distinction. There are just many patterns that don't reflect anything expected of any human-like designer. It could be the designer chose to make patterns exactly like those predicted by evolution. That is not a useful hypothesis, and shows how flexible design is as a theory.

The final part of this chapter is headed "the triumph of religion over science", which is the subtitle of the book. Hunter falls into some of the oldest and lasiest creationist cliches here. He says "what is clear is that the machine we call life did not fall into place on its own". Of course it didn't, and no one claims it did. This cliche about life happening by chance is followed immediately by another--that evolution requires more faith than design. He says "even the mechanism that produce biological variation defy evolution". I have no idea what that means. Variation arises by mutation. How does that defy evolution? He hints maybe we have to explain the evolution of mutation, I think. Finally, he says the fossils should form a continuous spectrum but instead falls into clusters, yet another creationists cliche, applying a completely unrealistic model of fossilazation onto evolution. There is a remarkable number of unsupported, well refuted claims to throw out on the last page.

He concludes that in "Darwinism", religion triumphed over science, because evolution is really a religion, yet another tired cliche. It is the main point of the book, but one Hunter has completely failed to support.