Is Evolution Finished?
Kazmer Ujvarosy
January 17, 2007
Has science been sidetracked into the blind alley of evolution from a simple beginning? Is it possible that what is seen as cosmic and biological evolution from simple beginnings is in fact cosmic ontogeny or development from the seed of the universe? Are both creationist and evolutionist explanations delusive descriptions of cosmic ontogeny?
Based on our common experience we know that the life of organisms, such as trees, is cyclic. The cycle is from seed to seed or from parent seed to offspring. It may be said that an organism’s life begins with a seed and ends in a seed. Knowing that such organisms are the parent seed’s or genotype’s instruments to make reproductions of itself, similarly as a mighty oak is the parent acorn’s way of making acorns in its own image, it seems rational to infer that the universe is no exception to the rule: the universe yields the complexity of human beings because a being akin to us generated the universe for the purpose of self-reproduction.
Thus, in a nutshell, according to this theory of creation the universe is the human genome’s way of making reproductions of itself, similarly as a nut tree is the nut’s way of making reproductions of itself. Because we are the reproductions of the parent seed of the universe, we have the parent seed’s creative qualities, and have the potential to become the parent seed of the next universe.
As viable theories have predictive power, let’s see the predictive power of this theory of creation from the qualities of our genetic constitution.
If a being akin to us created the universe for the production of human beings, predictably our universe does not have its origin in an infinitely dense and hot dimensionless singularity, but rather in a single seed, which seed is akin to our genome or genetic constitution.
Moreover, if a being akin to us created the universe for the production of human beings, then the cosmic system's parameters or determining characteristics must be exquisitely fine-tuned for our production, similarly as the parameters of an oak tree are exquisitely fine-tuned for the production of acorns. Remarkably, in astrophysics we find that exactly this is the case: the parameters of the universe are exquisitely fine-tuned for our production. This finding, combined with nature's observation, allows us to infer that our universe yields human beings as its terminal product or output because a being akin to us generated the universe for the production of human beings in its own image.
Finally, if a being akin to us created the universe for our production, then predictably it made itself known to its own progeny or children. Remarkably, in Christianity we find that Christ made known to us that he is the creator of the universe. What is even more significant, in Revelation 22:13 Christ disclosed that he is the cosmic system’s beginning and end, or input and output, just as a seed is a complex organism’s input and output.
I find this living cosmology – or, if you will, quantum cosmology – convincing because we know that the terminal products of organisms, namely their seeds or reproductive cells, serve as seeds or genotypes for the next organism. So if Christ is not only the parent seed of the universe, but also its terminal product, then it makes sense that he is going to be the parent seed of the next universe as well.
Of course we don’t have to take Christ’s testimony for granted; we don’t have to believe that he is the perpetual seed of the universe. But if he is the common ancestor of all forms of life, then evolution from a simple common ancestor must be false, and predictably what we have is not chance evolution, but development.
So do we have evidence that this is the case? Most definitely, but the evidence is not being advertised by the entrenched Darwinian establishment.
Fortunately Dr. John A. Davison, Professor Emeritus of Biology at the University of Vermont, noticed that several experts in the field failed to find evidence that the mechanisms proposed by Darwin can produce new kinds of living organisms. For example as early as 1922 Leo S. Berg, the Russian ichthyologist and zoogeographer, wrote: “The laws of the organic world are the same whether we are dealing with the development of an individual (ontogeny) or that of a paleontological series (phylogeny). Neither in the one nor in the other is there room for chance.” (Berg, L. Nomogenesis; or, Evolution Determined by Law. M. I. T. Press, Cambridge, 1969, p. 134.)
Thus, rejecting the Darwinian doctrine of chance evolution from a simple beginning, Berg argued that an organism’s qualities are determined entirely by the orderly unfolding of sequences that characterizes embryonic development.
In my opinion this finding is significant because if what is believed to be chance evolution is in fact development, then the “endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful” are not unfolding from a simple beginning, as Darwin proposed, but from a most complex genome, zygote, or universal common ancestor.
Professor Davison called my attention not only to the discovery that development and what is believed to be evolution are indistinguishable (obviously because what we have is development), but also to the finding that at one time in the past evolution came to an end. I find this observation also remarkable because the lack of “evolutionary progress” has an explanation: evidently what is believed to be "evolution" was finished because as soon as the cosmos yielded man in the cosmic seed's image – i.e., as soon as the universe became fit to produce human beings in the parent seed’s image –, the parent seed terminated the process of creation and took a break.
The cosmos is analogous not only to a tree system, but to an automobile plant as well, where the prototype determines the plant's characteristics. When the plant reaches that stage of development where it can crank out automobiles in the prototype's image, essentially the plant's development is over. There is need for further development only if improvements are desired in the plant's output.
Thus in the final analysis Darwin was correct, there is common descent, but it is not from a simple common ancestor, but from the existing most complex form of life, which to the best of our knowledge is human life. Experts find that the mechanism for the generation of new species is missing because the universe has all the tools for the production of human beings in our creator’s image. In short, evidently evolution is finished, because the creation of the universe is finished.
Professor Davison does not share this conclusion with me. Nevertheless he allowed me to attach to this article his pertinent paper, “Julian Huxley’s Confession,” which indicates that evolution was finished.
Julian Huxley’s Confession
By John A. Davison
The history of any science often reveals aspects of that science that have escaped attention in the intervening years. As someone so wisely put it -”The one thing we learn from history is that we don’t learn from history.” I present, in this brief essay, one particularly revealing demonstration of that phenomenon, one that is especially significant to the current status of the Darwinian hypothesis.
Julian Huxley was the grandson of the distinguished Thomas Henry Huxley, known as “Darwin’s bulldog” for his spirited defense of Darwin’s theory of evolution. Like his illustrious grandfather Julian Huxley became a major spokesperson for Darwinism when in 1942 he published his “Evolution: The Modern Synthesis.”
Two years earlier, Richard B. Goldschmidt had published “The Material Basis of Evolution” in which he had in effect dismissed the corpuscular gene as the evolutionary unit and instead proposed that it was the chromosome and its internal structure, which had served to direct evolutionary change. It is difficult to imagine two books more opposed in perspective.
Huxley referred to Goldschmidt some 28 times, yet remained a convinced selectionist Darwinian nevertheless. It is important to remember that Darwin wholeheartedly subscribed to Lyell’s Uniformitarian Doctrine; namely, that the forces we now see shaping the world are the same forces that have operated in the past. While that is what most geologists still accept there is no a priori justification for extending that concept to the living world. That is what makes what I am about to present all the more significant.
Huxley’s book ends with the chapter “Evolutionary Progress.” On page 571, seven pages before the end he presents the following synopsis. For emphasis I have italicized key words and phrases but otherwise it is verbatim.
Evolution is thus seen as a series of blind alleys. Some are extremely short - those leading to new genera and species that either remain stable or become extinct. Others are longer - the lines of adaptive radiation within a group such as a class or subclass, which run for tens of millions of years before coming up against their terminal blank wall. Others are still longer - the lines that have in the past led to the development of the major phyla and their highest representatives; their course is to be reckoned not in tens but in hundreds of millions of years. But all in the long run have terminated blindly. That of the echinoderms, for instance, reached its climax before the end of the Mesozoic. For the arthropods, represented by their highest group, the insects, the full stop seems to have come in the early Cenozoic: even the ants and bees have made no advance since the Oligocene. For the birds, the Miocene marked the end; for the mammals, the Pliocene.”
I was amazed to read this summary and was curious to find out what prompted Huxley to include it at the end of his book, as it would seem to negate much of what preceded it. Where did he get the notion that evolution was finished? This I feel I was able to do from a paper by the anti-Darwinian paleontologist Robert Broom. Huxley and Broom had corresponded on the subject as revealed by Broom:
And a few zoologists are beginning to recognize that evolution is slowing down, if not quite stopped. In a letter I had from Professor Julian Huxley only a few months ago he says, ‘I have often thought about your idea of the fading out of evolutionary potency, and though I cannot pretend to agree with some of the philosophical corollaries which you draw from it, I more and more believe that it is of great importance as a fact.’” (Broom, 1933).
I was disappointed to discover that the only reference Huxley made to Broom was in a footnote on page 568:
A small minority of biologists, such as Broom (1933), still feel impelled to invoke ‘spiritual agencies’ to account for progressive evolution, but their number is decreasing as the implications of modern selection theories are grasped.”
The reference to “spiritual agencies” by Broom was his suggestion that there had been a Plan, a word he capitalized.
Without referring to either Huxley or Broom, Pierre Grasse reached the same conclusions:
Facts are facts; no new broad organizational plan has appeared for several hundred million years, and for an equally long period of time numerous species, animal as well as plant, have ceased evolving… At best, present evolutionary phenomena are simply slight changes of genotypes within populations, or substitution of an allele with a new one.” (Grasse, The Evolution of Living Organisms, 1977 page 84.)
and:
The period of great fecundity is over; present evolution appears as a weakened process, declining or near its end. Aren’t we witnessing the remains of an immense phenomenon close to extinction? Aren’t the small variations which are being recorded everywhere the tail end, the last oscillations of the evolutionary movement? Aren’t our plants, our animals, lacking some mechanisms which were present in the early flora and fauna?”(Ibid, page 71).
I unhesitatingly answer yes to each of Grasse’s three questions and I hope others can as well.
The reason I have presented this brief essay is to demonstrate that, even from within the Darwinian establishment, grave doubts have surfaced concerning its basic tenets from one of their most prominent spokespersons. I am not surprised Huxley is rarely referenced these days.
References
Broom, R. (1933) Evolution - Is there intelligence behind it? South African Journal of Science, 30: 1-19
Goldschmidt, R. B. (1940) “The Material Basis of Evolution.” Yale University Press, New Haven.
Grasse, P. (1977 “Evolution of Living Organisms: Evidence for a New Theory of Transformation.” Academic Press, New York. (Original French edition 1973).
Huxley, J. (1942) “Evolution: The Modern Synthesis.” Harper, New York and London.
Based on our common experience we know that the life of organisms, such as trees, is cyclic. The cycle is from seed to seed or from parent seed to offspring. It may be said that an organism’s life begins with a seed and ends in a seed. Knowing that such organisms are the parent seed’s or genotype’s instruments to make reproductions of itself, similarly as a mighty oak is the parent acorn’s way of making acorns in its own image, it seems rational to infer that the universe is no exception to the rule: the universe yields the complexity of human beings because a being akin to us generated the universe for the purpose of self-reproduction.
Thus, in a nutshell, according to this theory of creation the universe is the human genome’s way of making reproductions of itself, similarly as a nut tree is the nut’s way of making reproductions of itself. Because we are the reproductions of the parent seed of the universe, we have the parent seed’s creative qualities, and have the potential to become the parent seed of the next universe.
As viable theories have predictive power, let’s see the predictive power of this theory of creation from the qualities of our genetic constitution.
If a being akin to us created the universe for the production of human beings, predictably our universe does not have its origin in an infinitely dense and hot dimensionless singularity, but rather in a single seed, which seed is akin to our genome or genetic constitution.
Moreover, if a being akin to us created the universe for the production of human beings, then the cosmic system's parameters or determining characteristics must be exquisitely fine-tuned for our production, similarly as the parameters of an oak tree are exquisitely fine-tuned for the production of acorns. Remarkably, in astrophysics we find that exactly this is the case: the parameters of the universe are exquisitely fine-tuned for our production. This finding, combined with nature's observation, allows us to infer that our universe yields human beings as its terminal product or output because a being akin to us generated the universe for the production of human beings in its own image.
Finally, if a being akin to us created the universe for our production, then predictably it made itself known to its own progeny or children. Remarkably, in Christianity we find that Christ made known to us that he is the creator of the universe. What is even more significant, in Revelation 22:13 Christ disclosed that he is the cosmic system’s beginning and end, or input and output, just as a seed is a complex organism’s input and output.
I find this living cosmology – or, if you will, quantum cosmology – convincing because we know that the terminal products of organisms, namely their seeds or reproductive cells, serve as seeds or genotypes for the next organism. So if Christ is not only the parent seed of the universe, but also its terminal product, then it makes sense that he is going to be the parent seed of the next universe as well.
Of course we don’t have to take Christ’s testimony for granted; we don’t have to believe that he is the perpetual seed of the universe. But if he is the common ancestor of all forms of life, then evolution from a simple common ancestor must be false, and predictably what we have is not chance evolution, but development.
So do we have evidence that this is the case? Most definitely, but the evidence is not being advertised by the entrenched Darwinian establishment.
Fortunately Dr. John A. Davison, Professor Emeritus of Biology at the University of Vermont, noticed that several experts in the field failed to find evidence that the mechanisms proposed by Darwin can produce new kinds of living organisms. For example as early as 1922 Leo S. Berg, the Russian ichthyologist and zoogeographer, wrote: “The laws of the organic world are the same whether we are dealing with the development of an individual (ontogeny) or that of a paleontological series (phylogeny). Neither in the one nor in the other is there room for chance.” (Berg, L. Nomogenesis; or, Evolution Determined by Law. M. I. T. Press, Cambridge, 1969, p. 134.)
Thus, rejecting the Darwinian doctrine of chance evolution from a simple beginning, Berg argued that an organism’s qualities are determined entirely by the orderly unfolding of sequences that characterizes embryonic development.
In my opinion this finding is significant because if what is believed to be chance evolution is in fact development, then the “endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful” are not unfolding from a simple beginning, as Darwin proposed, but from a most complex genome, zygote, or universal common ancestor.
Professor Davison called my attention not only to the discovery that development and what is believed to be evolution are indistinguishable (obviously because what we have is development), but also to the finding that at one time in the past evolution came to an end. I find this observation also remarkable because the lack of “evolutionary progress” has an explanation: evidently what is believed to be "evolution" was finished because as soon as the cosmos yielded man in the cosmic seed's image – i.e., as soon as the universe became fit to produce human beings in the parent seed’s image –, the parent seed terminated the process of creation and took a break.
The cosmos is analogous not only to a tree system, but to an automobile plant as well, where the prototype determines the plant's characteristics. When the plant reaches that stage of development where it can crank out automobiles in the prototype's image, essentially the plant's development is over. There is need for further development only if improvements are desired in the plant's output.
Thus in the final analysis Darwin was correct, there is common descent, but it is not from a simple common ancestor, but from the existing most complex form of life, which to the best of our knowledge is human life. Experts find that the mechanism for the generation of new species is missing because the universe has all the tools for the production of human beings in our creator’s image. In short, evidently evolution is finished, because the creation of the universe is finished.
Professor Davison does not share this conclusion with me. Nevertheless he allowed me to attach to this article his pertinent paper, “Julian Huxley’s Confession,” which indicates that evolution was finished.
Julian Huxley’s Confession
By John A. Davison
The history of any science often reveals aspects of that science that have escaped attention in the intervening years. As someone so wisely put it -”The one thing we learn from history is that we don’t learn from history.” I present, in this brief essay, one particularly revealing demonstration of that phenomenon, one that is especially significant to the current status of the Darwinian hypothesis.
Julian Huxley was the grandson of the distinguished Thomas Henry Huxley, known as “Darwin’s bulldog” for his spirited defense of Darwin’s theory of evolution. Like his illustrious grandfather Julian Huxley became a major spokesperson for Darwinism when in 1942 he published his “Evolution: The Modern Synthesis.”
Two years earlier, Richard B. Goldschmidt had published “The Material Basis of Evolution” in which he had in effect dismissed the corpuscular gene as the evolutionary unit and instead proposed that it was the chromosome and its internal structure, which had served to direct evolutionary change. It is difficult to imagine two books more opposed in perspective.
Huxley referred to Goldschmidt some 28 times, yet remained a convinced selectionist Darwinian nevertheless. It is important to remember that Darwin wholeheartedly subscribed to Lyell’s Uniformitarian Doctrine; namely, that the forces we now see shaping the world are the same forces that have operated in the past. While that is what most geologists still accept there is no a priori justification for extending that concept to the living world. That is what makes what I am about to present all the more significant.
Huxley’s book ends with the chapter “Evolutionary Progress.” On page 571, seven pages before the end he presents the following synopsis. For emphasis I have italicized key words and phrases but otherwise it is verbatim.
Evolution is thus seen as a series of blind alleys. Some are extremely short - those leading to new genera and species that either remain stable or become extinct. Others are longer - the lines of adaptive radiation within a group such as a class or subclass, which run for tens of millions of years before coming up against their terminal blank wall. Others are still longer - the lines that have in the past led to the development of the major phyla and their highest representatives; their course is to be reckoned not in tens but in hundreds of millions of years. But all in the long run have terminated blindly. That of the echinoderms, for instance, reached its climax before the end of the Mesozoic. For the arthropods, represented by their highest group, the insects, the full stop seems to have come in the early Cenozoic: even the ants and bees have made no advance since the Oligocene. For the birds, the Miocene marked the end; for the mammals, the Pliocene.”
I was amazed to read this summary and was curious to find out what prompted Huxley to include it at the end of his book, as it would seem to negate much of what preceded it. Where did he get the notion that evolution was finished? This I feel I was able to do from a paper by the anti-Darwinian paleontologist Robert Broom. Huxley and Broom had corresponded on the subject as revealed by Broom:
And a few zoologists are beginning to recognize that evolution is slowing down, if not quite stopped. In a letter I had from Professor Julian Huxley only a few months ago he says, ‘I have often thought about your idea of the fading out of evolutionary potency, and though I cannot pretend to agree with some of the philosophical corollaries which you draw from it, I more and more believe that it is of great importance as a fact.’” (Broom, 1933).
I was disappointed to discover that the only reference Huxley made to Broom was in a footnote on page 568:
A small minority of biologists, such as Broom (1933), still feel impelled to invoke ‘spiritual agencies’ to account for progressive evolution, but their number is decreasing as the implications of modern selection theories are grasped.”
The reference to “spiritual agencies” by Broom was his suggestion that there had been a Plan, a word he capitalized.
Without referring to either Huxley or Broom, Pierre Grasse reached the same conclusions:
Facts are facts; no new broad organizational plan has appeared for several hundred million years, and for an equally long period of time numerous species, animal as well as plant, have ceased evolving… At best, present evolutionary phenomena are simply slight changes of genotypes within populations, or substitution of an allele with a new one.” (Grasse, The Evolution of Living Organisms, 1977 page 84.)
and:
The period of great fecundity is over; present evolution appears as a weakened process, declining or near its end. Aren’t we witnessing the remains of an immense phenomenon close to extinction? Aren’t the small variations which are being recorded everywhere the tail end, the last oscillations of the evolutionary movement? Aren’t our plants, our animals, lacking some mechanisms which were present in the early flora and fauna?”(Ibid, page 71).
I unhesitatingly answer yes to each of Grasse’s three questions and I hope others can as well.
The reason I have presented this brief essay is to demonstrate that, even from within the Darwinian establishment, grave doubts have surfaced concerning its basic tenets from one of their most prominent spokespersons. I am not surprised Huxley is rarely referenced these days.
References
Broom, R. (1933) Evolution - Is there intelligence behind it? South African Journal of Science, 30: 1-19
Goldschmidt, R. B. (1940) “The Material Basis of Evolution.” Yale University Press, New Haven.
Grasse, P. (1977 “Evolution of Living Organisms: Evidence for a New Theory of Transformation.” Academic Press, New York. (Original French edition 1973).
Huxley, J. (1942) “Evolution: The Modern Synthesis.” Harper, New York and London.
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