“Purpose implies design. Design implies a designer.” William Paley’s teleological argument for the existence of God through the analogy of a watch.
Darwin’s Origin of Species
Recently, I have been working through the book “Replacing Darwin: The New Origin of Species.” Its author, Nathaniel T. Jeanson, works through the premise that Charles Darwin (1809-1882 A.D.) was wrong about his theory of Natural Selection and Evolution. The reason being, is that Darwin was looking at the wrong evidence and asking the wrong question for the origin of species. In essence, he was putting together a jigsaw puzzle that lacked a box cover and many pieces.
By drawing from the growing fields of biogeography, embryology, physiology, geology, paleontology, and anatomy, Darwin made connections where prior investigators only saw empty space. As Darwin sought to answer the question of the origin of species from the diversity he observed, he unfortunately saw each species as their own puzzle, rather than connecting the different species’ puzzles to one another. It’s easy to take pieces of a puzzle and force them to fit each other; especially if you don’t have the big picture perspective of the box cover.
Eventually, Darwin proposed that all species evolved from one or a few common ancestors. This was a massive paradigm shift which birthed an entirely new field of science, which has matured.
The Edge Pieces to the Origin of Species — FOUND
One thing that Darwin lacked in his efforts to solve the origin of species, is the edge pieces to the puzzle. The edge pieces are what define the boundaries of the puzzle and keep you confined to how the picture ought to be. The edges and corners let you know that the pieces do not fit beyond that point. You are limited to that horizontal and vertical placement in your assembly. Once the edges are found and assembled, it is simply trial and error to get the center pieces to fit together.
Jeanson, and his team at Answers in Genesis, have finally found the edge pieces to the origin of species. This is what I want to discuss through a series of articles following their research.
The Origin of Traits – Asking the Right Question
Even though species are not literal jigsaw puzzles, we can reflect on some parallels in this biological analogy for the edge pieces. Consider species that we are familiar with. Using the example in the book (pp. 15-16), we recognize elephants by their trunks, giraffes by their long necks, zebras by their stripes, monarch butterflies by their patterns on their gossamer wings, and bald eagles by the color of the feathers on their heads.
We can see that species are defined by their traits.
This is true across all life, whether it is mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians, fish, crustaceans, arachnids, insects, worms, shellfish, octopi, snails, jellyfish, corals, sponges, ferns, mosses, grasses, conifers, orchids fruit trees, algae, fungi, bacteria, and all other life forms on the earth. They each possess unique combinations of traits
- The question of the origin of species is a question of the origin of traits.
Simply put, if you want to know the origin of elephants, then it is found in the origin of trunks. If you want to know the origin of zebras, then you need to discover the origin of stripes. Same with giraffes and their long necks and any other species. Their origins are found in the traits that define them.
“The solution to the origin of traits represents the hard constraints on the origin of species — the edge pieces of the puzzle.”
Jeanson, “Replacing Darwin,” pg. 16
Tracking the Origin of Traits
In 1859, when Darwin wrote On the Origin of Species, zero edge pieces were known. The reason being is that there was no record of how traits were passed down in those species. Now, unfortunately, species that aren’t human cannot keep written records of their family trees and their traits. Since we as humans do, we can start by observing our own family trees and see what traits are passed down.
Perhaps some in your family have red hair or particular chin shapes. If you have a smaller family tree, then you may have to follow more than one trait. However, as you investigate your family, you may find several oddities or inexplicable ways in how your traits behave. Some family members who have red hair may have kids who do not have those traits. Those traits may not reappear for several generations.
If we talk about extinct species or fossils, the problems multiply. Extinct species have no explicit connection to anything living. We can only assume that a mode of inheritance exists; because fossils cannot inform how traits behave.
If you had access to a microscope, you would discover that the most inexplicable behavior of all is: all traits are erased each generation, and then rebuilt. For example, when a sperm meets an egg, the visible features which define multicellular species are not present. Instead, such characteristics come up during the development process.
To summarize, a host of perplexing questions appear when trying to track the behavior of visible traits. You will also discover an intimidating number of paradoxes too.
Do traits form spontaneously? Can they be destroyed? Can they be changed; and if so, how much can they be changed? Are they independent or maybe interdependent? And are they inherited as a whole, particulate, or blended?
Mendel and Trait Inheritance
When Darwin wrote On the Origin of Species, all that he and the scientific community possessed were paradoxes, not the edge pieces of the puzzle which traits provide.
Reason being is that, if traits could appear and disappear, how can a person trace a species’ ancestry? What kind of markers exist or that you can use to fill in a family tree? If traits are rebuilt every generation, can any species become another species?
The answer to heredity helps us in solving the enigma of the origin of species.
This is where several important discovers came about. A notable one was accomplished in 1865 by Gregor Mendel, an Austrian monk. Mendel solved the paradoxes of family trees through his study of pea plants. Since plants don’t keep record of their inheritance, Mendel did it for them.
Mendel observed and documented the inheritance of pea plants over several generations. His efforts consisted of counting pea plant offspring and recording the traits that appeared in each generation. Mendel made hundreds of crosses and counted thousands of peas of the span almost a decade.
Unit Factors in a Traits’ Origin
Mendel discovered that by crossing pea plants with pure-breeding yellow seeds to pea plants with pure-breeding green seeds, all of the offspring (i.e. the first F1 generation) of this combination bore yellow seeds. It wasn’t a blended mixture of yellow and green. The traits remained distinct. Mendel’s experiments showed that inheritance was particulate rather than blended.
These particulate units of inheritance are called unit factors and were an incredible step forward for Mendel. When traits appear and disappear on family trees, the traits must have to do with these unit factors. As Mendel crossed the offspring of these self-fertilized plants, about 75% of the second generation (F2) bore yellow seeds. Green seeds appeared 25% of the time. The same ratio of 3:1 appeared upon crossing a third generation of the self-fertilized offspring (F3). This meant that genes weren’t lost, but could remain dormant. This explained how a generation could be skipped with a particular trait.
Mendel’s tests showed that there was a dominate trait (yellow peas, in the case) and a recessive trait (the green pea plant).
He even went further in his experiments and began to cross seed forms — seeds which were wrinkled and seeds that were not — along with colored seeds. The result was the same 3:1 ratio, but each unit factor showed to be independent of each other. This meant that a yellow seed was still dominant but may or may not be wrinkled upon a given generation. The combination and mathematical distribution of multiple traits would be overwhelming to calculate. But a Punnett square can diagram the probabilities for each unit factor.
Ending Thoughts
Mendel’s work was a great start and laid the foundation for our modern understanding of trait behavior. However, despite the strength of his findings, his results did not answer the question of why unit factors behave in the way that they do. Mendel’s rules predicted how traits interact and combine, but his predictions didn’t reveal whether the rules could change. Especially, if they had changed in the past.
If the rules could change in unexpected ways, then perhaps a fish could become a spider. Or maybe it did in the past. Fortunately, several decades after Mendel’s death, careful observation of cells during cell division put Mendel’s principles in a concrete, subcellular and even mechanistic terms.
Next article I write about this topic will be on cell division and the repository nature of chromosomes. These studies will lead to the result of tracing lineage back to Noah and the Flood, found in Genesis 6-10, and the Tower of Babel in chapter 11.
My overarching goal in these writings is to figure out the origin of people groups. Then, trace their religious beliefs from a monotheistic worldview, after the Flood, to what they believe now.
Further Study
For more study on the Biblical Worldview and what it says about the origin of the universe, check out these articles:
The New Origin of Species (Part 2) – Chromosomes & DNA
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