Q&A: Questions about Evolution
Questions about Evolution
Question
Hello Rabbi, a few questions about evolution בעקבות reading your book:
1) The Rabbi wrote regarding irreducibly complex structures that the problem with them is that the existence of half an organ gives no survival advantage that would justify the existence of half an organ. But I don’t understand why such an advantage is needed in every generation, and I’ll give an example.
I’ll present a possible (theoretical) evolutionary description regarding the formation of an eye.
Generation 1: There are only eyeless mice. They survive even without eyes, since there are no predators threatening them / they know how to sense predators through other senses.
Generation 2: One mouse develops a mutation that gives it half an eye. This half-eye gives it no survival advantage at all (it can’t see anything with it), but it also gives it no disadvantage, and therefore the creature continues to the next generation.
Generation 3: This mouse undergoes another mutation, which gives it another half-eye. Now it already has a survival advantage (it can see).
Generation 4: Predators that threaten the mice arrive in the area where the mice are found. The mouse with eyes (and its descendants) is the only one that survives, since the eye helps it escape the danger of the predator.
Generation 5: The mouse with the eye reproduces.
Final result: In generation 1 there are no mice with eyes, and in generation 5 there are only mice with eyes.
In generation 2, the mouse’s half-eye had no survival advantage, and nevertheless today all mice have eyes.
Of course, this can be broken down into many generations, so that in each generation a tenth of an eye is formed (for example).
What is incorrect about this description?
2) The Rabbi argued in the book as follows: “Therefore, even if the initial state and the final state are close in terms of the genetic sequence, it is still not clear why the laws governing the formation of mutations prefer to change the genetic sequence only slightly, rather than changing it completely.”
I really do not understand this claim. The physico-theological argument can be divided into parts, as follows:
a) Fine Tuning — the laws of nature are special in that they allow biology to come into being.
b) A first cell was formed that can replicate itself — the laws of nature are special in that they actually produced (and did not merely allow) a living cell with the ability to replicate.
These I understand. But the Rabbi argues that there is a third stage, beyond those two stages, and it is within the evolutionary process itself:
c) The “living” islands in the sea of mutations are close to one another (the changes produced by mutations are small).
In my opinion, b) and c) are exactly the same thing.
After all, level b) claims that a cell was formed that can replicate itself, and the meaning of the word “replicate” is: “to copy genome x from one place to another without making any change in it.”
Except what? There is a flaw in nature that causes the cell not to copy the genome exactly, and isolated errors fall into each copy. This is a degeneration in nature, and we still have not left the category of “replication.”
So the claim that the living states in the genetic sequence are close to one another is exactly the second level, which speaks about the formation of a cell with the ability of self-replication, plus the fact that nature is not perfect and copies the code with minor mistakes.
3) Is it possible to convince someone of the existence of God, someone who is mistaken and does not understand the problem with infinite regress, by means of the physico-theological argument? Is stopping the regress in this proof necessary for the validity of the argument?
I would be happy for an explanation.
Answer
1) The debate over irreducibly complex structures is an old one, and an ocean of ink has been spilled over it. I do not necessarily support this argument, nor do I think it matters to the discussion (since it deals with the question whether evolution is correct, whereas my claim in the book is that belief in God does not depend on that scientific question). Specifically, in my opinion your argument does not hold water, because at the stage where there is half an eye there is no reason for it to survive, since it gives no survival advantage. It could happen by chance, but then again we simply have a successful chance occurrence and not a substantive explanation. But as I said, I have no interest in such discussions. The same is true of the following discussions.
2) I did not understand the argument here. This is not about replication but about refinement. But a process of refinement assumes that there is no break in the sequence (that is the “closeness”).
3) Someone who accepts infinite regress can object to any argument in all sorts of ways. The argument from the laws would be rejected by him on the grounds that there was something else that created the laws, and something that created that something else, and so on. Everything is blind laws with no intelligent entity at the base.
Discussion on Answer
1) I didn’t understand. Why wouldn’t the mice with half an eye survive? I emphasized that the half-eye also gives them no evolutionary disadvantage. As long as the eyeless mice survive, the mouse with half an eye also survives. On what point does the Rabbi disagree? Why specifically wouldn’t the mouse with half an eye survive? The other mice are also eyeless.
Or: just as eyeless mice survive despite having no survival advantage, so too the mouse with half an eye certainly isn’t worse off than they are.
2) True, there has to be refinement. But there the Rabbi specifically focused on the question, “Who determined that the distance between the living islands would be small,” but that point has already been “counted” by us in the context of abiogenesis; it isn’t serious to count the same lady in a different dress twice. After all, the physico-theological argument also claims that it is improbable that a self-replicating sequence would arise. Once we already have such a sequence, one cannot play innocent and count the same thing in different wording: “Who placed the islands close to one another?”—after all, that is exactly what a self-replicating cell means: that it replicates the sequence with complete precision, plus the fact that there are errors in replication that cause small changes which ultimately lead to refinement.
The Rabbi treats the replicating cell as: “a system for jumping between genome codes,” but that is incorrect. It should be treated as: “a system that replicates itself,” and then when one sees small changes, it is completely understandable, because in principle the replication was supposed to be exact, except that there is a flaw in nature.
3) But when that same ‘acceptor of regressions’ sees a watch, he assumes it has an intelligent maker, even though, as the Rabbi says, he could assume that there was an ancient factory that produced this watch, and an ancient factory that produced that factory, ad infinitum.
Even for those who accept regressions, wouldn’t it make more sense to place something intelligent at the end of the laws of nature, and claim that there is an infinite chain of gods?
I know the Rabbi does not like answering questions that assume errors (that one can accept regress), but since very many people are willing to accept regress, it is important to know whether this argument works on them, and in my opinion it definitely does.
After all, the physico-theological argument does not rely directly on stopping regress, but on the fact that a complex thing requires an intelligent composer/designer — conclusion: the world has an intelligent composer/designer. And then it splits:
1) One who does not accept regress stops at that composer/designer and claims that it is not within our experience, and therefore does not itself require a composer/designer.
2) One who does accept regress continues to demand a composer/designer even for that composer/designer, and so on to infinity. That is, an infinite chain of intelligent entities.
A, although your question was directed to the Rabbi, from my acquaintance with evolution scientists the reason they do not accept the possibility of “half an eye” that has no advantage (and also no disadvantage) is because of the low probability. After all, the first mouse that comes into being with “half an eye” still needs the completion of the “second half.” But since there are countless meaningless combinations as opposed to meaningful ones (think how many neutral combinations can be made from the parts of a video camera, for example), you have not changed the space of sequences. So in practice it is the same probability as the appearance of a complete eye. Therefore, the overwhelming majority of evolution scientists as well (like Dawkins, for example) advocate adaptive evolution rather than neutral evolution.
To G—
Thanks for trying to help, but I didn’t understand.
Suppose half an eye did have a survival advantage—how would that create a difficulty for the response you are raising? Half an eye would still have had to appear, and that probability is equal to the appearance of a whole eye.
The probability of the appearance of half an eye is not equal to the probability of the appearance of a whole eye. Because if that were so, then supporters of evolution would already claim that a complex eye appeared all at once and not through the accumulation of gradual advantageous steps. That is the whole essence of evolution—breaking down the probabilistic problem into small steps. Therefore, if there were a benefit in half an eye, then there would be a much higher probability of such an evolutionary occurrence as compared to the appearance of a whole eye.
I really don’t understand! Why does there need to be an advantage? The Rabbi argues that it is unlikely that it would survive, but that is not understood, because eyeless mice also have no advantage and they survived.
I would be happy for a much broader answer.
Okay, think of the following analogy: suppose the gene encoding a complete eye is represented by the sentence “This gene encodes a complete eye.” That means a gene encoding half an eye would be half a sentence—namely, “This gene encodes.” Now suppose half an eye has already been formed. That is, the sentence “This gene encodes” (that is, half an eye). What is the probability that now the second half of the sentence will appear? Suppose the first letter “e” was created in a mutation. It has no advantage over any other letter. Therefore, until the sentence “a complete eye” is completed, in effect any letter could be considered, and so the completion of the eye will never occur. After all, there are countless combinations for an 8-letter sentence (about 8^22). Clearly most sentence combinations are gibberish. Also think of the simpler analogy of a lock with about 10 digits that is all-or-nothing. If you have already changed about 5 digits, that does not mean you have gotten closer to opening the 10-digit lock. In fact, you have not gotten any closer at all, because it is an all-or-nothing lock. Therefore there has to be a benefit at each stage. If there were a benefit at each stage, then every change in the right direction toward opening the lock would bring you closer to the correct combination. Therefore that is also what is required in evolution.
I would be happy for an answer from the Rabbi.
To G, it seems to me that you are making a serious mistake. Evolution, unlike Lamarckism, does not claim that there is a direction to mutations, that is, that evolution tends to create mutations suited to conditions on the ground so that they survive better.
Therefore your following sentence: “What is the probability that now the second half of the sentence will appear? Suppose the first letter ‘e’ was created in a mutation. It has no advantage over any other letter. Therefore, until the sentence ‘a complete eye’ is completed, in effect any letter could be considered, and so the completion of the eye will never occur.”
Rabbi?
I already explained above that I have no interest in and see no point in these discussions. These are scientific questions that have no bearing on the theological discussion. I did not follow the whole exchange here.
Can you address only question 1? Why does the Rabbi have no interest in explaining scientific matters?
The whole thread doesn’t matter; I’ll copy the relevant part:
I didn’t understand. Why wouldn’t the mice with half an eye survive? I emphasized that the half-eye also gives them no evolutionary disadvantage. As long as the eyeless mice survive, the mouse with half an eye also survives. On what point does the Rabbi disagree? Why specifically wouldn’t the mouse with half an eye survive? The other mice are also eyeless.
Or: just as eyeless mice survive despite having no survival advantage, so too the mouse with half an eye certainly isn’t worse off than they are.
Hello. I’ll address this once, and that’s it.
First, on the factual level: for some reason, no creature around us is equipped with half an organ that has no use.
Second, even if such a creature were to arise, it would be a rare mutation (there are far fewer mice with half an eye than mice without eyes), and therefore it is likely to die out for all sorts of reasons (not necessarily because they are less viable, but simply statistics) and not continue and develop another half-eye. Moreover, a process of half + half requires the probability of a two-link process, and that in itself lowers the probability. And of course in reality we are not talking here about a chain of two links but of a much longer chain (half an eye does not develop in one step).
And third, I have no interest in all this because it is the business of evolution researchers. That is their profession. It has no implications for the theological discussion. You can ask them why there are no creatures around us with half-organs that serve no purpose.
That’s it. I won’t address this any further.
Interesting.
But there are useless organs in the human body, no?
Regarding the irreducible complexity of the eye: one of the simplest mechanisms in nature is actually the eyespot, which is capable of distinguishing between light and darkness, and even it is composed of about 200 different proteins:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eyespot_apparatus
"Besides photoreceptor proteins, eyespots contain a large number of structural, metabolic and signaling proteins. The eyespot proteome of Chlamydomonas cells consists of roughly 200 different proteins"
That is, even the first step is not simple at all and requires a whole series of proteins. This can also be understood from human engineering. Suppose someone asks you to create the most minimal mechanism capable of distinguishing between light and darkness so as to install it in some robot and enable it to respond accordingly. Of course you would not be able to do this with a single component; rather, you would need a series of different parts to create such a minimal mechanism. Therefore, such a minimal mechanism cannot develop gradually through evolution.