Of Fruit Flies and God

Now that I'm on my "scientists are jerks" kick I might as well reply to a sentence in my friend K's email that I last time neglected. He said not only that he found the hypothesis that humans are continuing to evolve mentally to be a "fructifying belief", he stated as well:

"...there is an idea that many people are attracted to, that in some areas of knowledge we have reached a pinnacle beyond which we will never be able to go.... I agree with that up to a point...Probably you can see where I am going?"

Yes. At least I have my guess. As the mind evolves in time the great mysteries in life, the "unsolved mysteries" will be understood by the superior being; thus this belief in continued mental evolution expresses an aspiration toward understanding, a love of wisdom.

Okay, but Darwin ain't going to make it happen.

I think it's important to distinguish between what has happened historically, which certainly does seem to be a movement toward ever more complex and admirable life forms, and what is promised by Darwinian theory. This theory has one mechanism: chance fortuitous mutation preserved through natural selection. That's it. The genius of the idea is natural selection, and lots a lots a time. Before the mystical conception of natural selection no one could have looked about the complex world around them and said without being silly that this all happened by chance. But with "natural selection" and immense time you have respectability. Another friend once explained it: Either God did it or he didn't; if you don't want to believe in God, he didn't, and you believe in Darwin. That's true. Darwinism is theology.

But this silly idea supposedly is testable, that's what makes it "science", and "respectable".

So let's conduct a test.

This weekend, as I was sitting across from my ma watching her be cross and loony, I happened to read an interesting statement:

"Scientists have been experimenting with fruit flies for a hundred years...."

This is interesting. The fruit fly has a life cycle of 14 days. That means that in one year 26 generations are produced.

Eighty years ago it was discovered that if they're bombarded by x-rays, random genetic mutations occur at 150 times the normal rate.

Evolutionary theory states that all mutation is random. Most would be harmful, some would be fortuitous.

A human generation can be taken to be 25 years.

From this it's possible to do some math. 20 x 26 = 520 generations produced the first 20 years under stress conditions meant to parallel the stress presumed in natural selection.

In the eighty years after the beginning of x-ray bombardment the numbers would be 80 x 26 x150 = the number of random genetic mutations that would occur naturally in 312,000 generations of fruit flies under normal conditions.

Adding the two numbers together you get 312,520 generations. If you presume that more than one lab has been doing this, perhaps 1000 worldwide, each its own separate "eco system", you get 312,520,000 generations produced under stress conditions meant to mimic those of natural selection. If you multiply by the term of human generation --25 years-- you get 7,813,000,000 years.

My, that's more than 50,000.

Nearly eight billion years. This is the number of years in equivalent human terms during which natural selection as prescribed by Darwinian theory has been carefully observed by scientists under laboratory conditions, and in all that time not one species variation had occurred that did not revert to type in a matter of months. In other words, in over seven billion years of Darwinian evolution fruit flies haven't changed, haven't developed the capacity to contemplate God, and are, as a matter of fact, fruit flies.

Now of course, I suppose if you merely want to put in 50,000 years just to get to the point where humans can do large primes in there head without computers, well, I guess that aspiration is more modest.

I find Darwinism no different from the atomism of Democratus. In each case it's a materialism: if you want to deny the spiritual world you find a way. With Democratus it was very small particles, infinitely small but not infinitely divisible. They couldn't be infinitely divisible because that would mean spirit, but they had to be infinitely small so that they couldn't be observed and the theory couldn't be challenged. For Darwinism the similarity is Time, nearly infinite amounts of Time, simply so that the theory can't be tested. Democritus used atoms to explain consciousness. We know a lot about atoms now, they don't explain consciousness. Darwin uses time and natural selection to explain creation. This doesn't explain creation, it does state a belief. This can be a belief of choice, but it's not science.

Incidentally, while I believe "scientists are jerks", I don't believe honest men doing science are jerks. They're rather admirable in fact.

(Note: I see a fairly severe error in my logic. It only takes one fruit fly to get the ball rolling, one fortuitous fruit fly mutation. In the eco system of the world there are billions upon trillions of fruit flies; in the eco system of the labs only tens of thousands per lab. That cuts down on the number of fruit flies potentially mutant, and so I suppose cuts down on the effective number of years that this Darwinian test has been made, (though not on the number of generations). And I would note that certainly more fruit flies have been tested than ever there were Mammoths, for example, and yet in just a few hundred thousand years a number species of that hairy creature developed and went extinct. It seems some little change should have happened is such a little creature as the fruit fly. Or perhaps the most interesting thing is the reversion to type? --Will have to take my own critique under advisement.