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Not even a tiny, little, itty,-bitty part. That is absolutely wrong. I am being clear? He did not think that. It was not his inspiration.The word “fittest” or “fit” in biology does not mean, and never has meant, and never will mean, “strongest”. It is short for “reproductive fitness”. This means one variation in a a population having more offspring than another variation. It does not have to do with be “stronger” in most cases. For many animals it means being able hide better and thus protect their offspring. It could mean being able to get more food and thus keep more babies alive. It could mean being able to cooperate in a group better to support more offspring. The simple fact is if a certain trait means that those offspring that have it are more likely to grow up in greater numbers then that trait will become more common over time. That is the whole insight and inspiration. In large part, he was inspired by looking at all the collections he brought back from his 4 year trip. It took several years to go through it all. One of the first inspirations was when an ornithologist looked at the birds and found that he had been wrong about what they were. He had labeled them as many different sorts. The ornithologist said they were all finchesDarwin did not mean “only the strongest survive” and almost none of the 150 years of other evolutionary biologists have mean that. Herbert Spencer, not a biologist, but a deluded, wrong and a bit evil sociologist and political thinker, coined the phrase “survival of the fittest” in 1864. This was 5 years after Origin of the Species was publish and decades after Darwin’s ideas were developed. Wallace liked the phrase from Spenser, and suggested to Darwin that it might fit, but it was not his main or first way of writing about things.The ideas that Spenser promoted were not new to him. There were part of “classic liberalism” in England. These ideas are the sort that Reagan and other right wing people in the US have promoted since the mid 1970s. The ideas are sometimes called. “social Darwinism”. However, Darwin had nothing to do with them and did not approve of these ideas. Spenser led support to pretty disgusting 19th century capitalists who as "an ethical precept that sanctioned cut-throat economic competition"and used it to justify laissez-faire economics, war, colonial oppression, and racism.We have huge amount of letters and writing and notebooks from Darwin and others so that we do know the exact progression of ideas that inspired Darwin. Here is a brief outline:Before his trip on the Beagle, Darwin liked the ideas of Paley. These were the "argument from design" thesis. He was inspired in travel and science by reading Alexander von Humboldt's 7-vol. "Personal Narrative" of his South America adventures. Darwin had been an amateur naturalist for most of his life. His grandfather wrote a famous book on a type of mystic evolution.Would it be too bold to imagine, that in the great length of time, since the earth began to exist, perhaps millions of ages before the commencement of the history of mankind, would it be too bold to imagine, that all warm-blooded animals have arisen from one living filament, which THE GREAT FIRST CAUSE endued with animality, with the power of acquiring new parts, attended with new propensities, directed by irritations, sensations, volitions, and associations; and thus possessing the faculty of continuing to improve by its own inherent activity, and of delivering down those improvements by generation to its posterity, world without end!Darwin became friends with Lyell, the famous geologist who was 12 years older than him. Darwin's reading of Lyell's Principles of Geology prompted him to think of evolution as a slow process in which small changes gradually accumulate over immense spans of time. Darwin, who took a copy of Lyell's Principles around the world with him.On 1836 October 2 HMS Beagle finally arrived home after a voyage of four years, nine months. After returning form his trip he started organizing his collect and notes. After returning from his trip round the world, Darwin became good friends with Lyell, who advised him on fossils and subjects geological. Lyell also talked extensively with Darwin about his nascent ideas on evolutionary theory and gave him advice on manuscripts. In the 1837 middle of March 1837Darwin took up residence nearby in 36 Great Marlborough Street. During this month Darwin began to have doubts about the idea of new species coming about by a series of miraculous creations, and he was starting to question Paley's "argument from design" thesis. Based on his observations during the Beagle voyage, Darwin saw that some new theory of speciation was needed. This was to become his quest, to discover the process by which new species come to exist.In late March, John Gould, an ornithologist at the London Zoo Museum, who had been examining the birds Darwin brought back from the Galapagos Islands discovered that the birds were not finches, blackbirds, wrens, and gross beaks as Darwin thought, but were in fact all distinct species of finches. Upon further examination Gould saw that the major distinction between the finches was the shape of their beaks. Darwin now had an exciting mystery on his hands. How did an original population of finches from the mainland migrate to the Galapagos and then change into several species? This was his main inspiration.In May, Darwin was influenced by the recent discovery of "fossilized monkeys" in Africa. He conjectured that such fossils were evidence that mankind was descended from some kind of ape ancestor.In June, he talked with Richard Owen (who is famous for work on dinosaur anatomy). Owen was looking at the mammal fossil specimens that Darwin brought back. He later wrote a book on them. Owen felt each species had its own "organizing energy" which dictated how far a species can change (not very much, according to Owen). Furthermore, there was a relationship between the complexity of a species and the power of this organizing force. Darwin told Owen he agreed with his basic theory, but he did not see why their should be limits to change. Owen read him the riot act and was very critical.Some time in July, Darwin began his secret "B" Notebook in which he put down his thoughts on the subject of transmutation. In this notebook Darwin examined four general questions --- what was the evidence for species transmutation?- how did species adapt to a changing environment?- how were new species formed?- how one could account for the similarities between different species?One of the highlights of the B Notebook was his analogy of a branching tree to represent common descent of all species.Towards the beginning of 1838 he concluded that he was starting to disagree with his peers about the preeminence of mankind. For Darwin, all species were equally impressive right down to the simple earthworms. For him, natural laws determined how an organism developed and such laws play no favorites. The only problem was that he had no idea what these laws of nature were.In the middle of March in 1838, he started his "C" notebook which focused mainly on transmutation, the distribution of species, the relation between habit and structure, and behavioral adaptations. The manner in which Darwin gathered information for this notebook was rather clever. He fired off a list of questions to pigeon breeders, dog breeders, experts on animal husbandry, and a host of other animal experts. These men were a very large influence on him. He was very unusual for his class in that he valued and took seriously the insights of lower class working men. Most at the time refused to do this sort of research.At the end of the spring he began to see that the adaptation of species was relative to the environment a species lived in. As the environment changed, so too did species change in order to survive. The commonly held belief that all species were perfectly adapted to their surroundings was therefore false. He was also convinced that there were no separate races of man, but only environmentally adapted modifications of them. Soon, Darwin was expanding the influence of descent, making it responsible for emotions, habits, instincts, ethics, and morals.In July he started his "D" and "M" Notebooks. The D Notebook focused on species reproduction and the origin of adaptation, while the M Notebook continued with the origin of adaptation, and then went on to the origin of man, and the expression of emotions.In October, Darwin read a book by the famous economist,the Reverend Thomas Malthus, titled "Essay on the Principle of Population." In this book Malthus put forward the economic theory that as human populations grow and resources become scarce and some will struggle. Darwin theorized that the same kind of relationship may exist in the wild. Darwin began his "E" and "N" Notebooks. The "E" book continued his transmutation ideas, his thoughts on the population theory, how variation and adaptation are related, the rate of species change, the separation of the sexes, and the differences between selection by animal breeders and selection in nature. The "N" Notebook continued the topics covered in "M" but with fewer theoretical considerations and more definition of terms.In November he proposed to Emma. From his and her relatives they received money that produced an income of about £2,000 a year. This was more that a doctor or lawyer got at the time. They would have made about 1,500 a year. This meant he could do writing and research his whole life. The money came from the pottery business on his wife’s family (who was his cousin) and from his father who was a doctor.In late November he continued working with the variation of species and now saw that the methods of nature and breeders were not all that different, but while nature worked on millions of characteristics, breeders worked on only a few. Both, however, weeded out undesirable traits.In 1839 he published his book on his trip on the Beagle. It did very well.In June, Darwin finished working on his transmutation notebooks (N was the last one). He continued with his book - "The Structure and Distribution of Coral Reefs." He was concerned that his ideas would be used for atheistic revolutionary ends so, he decided not to publish anything from the notebooks and shelved them.In 1840 he was ill for about 9 months.In November Darwin gave a lot thought to how a bat's wings developed over time and wondered what good half a wing would do. Perhaps wings previously had a different function? Darwin also pondered over fossil evidence for the transmutation of species. At the time there were very few of them in the museums, but he figured in the future enough would be found to provide evidence for one species changing into another.In 1841 and half of ‘42 he worked on other projects and moved their home.In late June Darwin wrote up a thirty-five page sketch of his ideas about transmutation. This was the very first rough draft of his theory. In it he had natural selection figured out, and had a basic description of descent, both of which he said obeyed strict laws of nature. At this time Darwin thought these "laws of nature" were set forth by god during creation, after which time god stepped back and no longer intervened with the universe.Darwin made an outline of reasons not to published his transmutation ideas :[1] Fellow naturalists would never accept his ideas.[2] animal breeders would find a huge treatise too boring to read.[3] the trouble making atheists would use it for their evil agendas.[4] the church would scorn him.[5] he did not want to be labeled an atheist.[6] he would betray his friends and family to whom he owed so much.On January 11, 1844, becuase he was impressed with Joseph Hooker's work on Darwin’s Tierra del Fuego plants, Darwin took a giant risk and confided in him about his transmutation theories. Hooker's reaction was one of guarded enthusiasm, but he was eager to hear more about it. Darwin was pleasantly surprised.In February he took Hooker on as a research assistant. Hooker searched through libraries and museums for books and data and specimens on botany for Darwin.In spring 1844 he wrote out a 189 page manuscript of the sketch of his ideas. Now his transmutation theory had developed into a sort of self correcting feed-back loop, in which animals and plants remain unmodified until the environment changes. When changes took place the members of a species with traits that gave them a slight advantage in the new environment gained more reproductive success. Over eons of time this process resulted in one species transmutating into another.By September his manuscript was now 231 pages. For the very first time he showed the sketch to Emma, expecting the worst. Surprisingly, her response to it was not as bad as he thought it would be. She expressed concern about various assumptions he was making, suggested a few corrections here and there, but for the most part her reaction appeared to have been quite reserved.In 1845, Darwin started working on a revised edition of his Journal of Researches. This edition included a new section in which he commented on the disgusting and reprehensible nature of slavery.He worked of other writing, for the most part, in 1846.In late January in 1847, Hooker read Darwin's now 231 page essay on transmutation. He had difficulty accepting the idea that new species were derived from previous ones. He opted for a continual divine creation of new species as others died out. Nevertheless, he pointed out sections of the essay that needed clarification, and those parts that were not easy to understand.In ’48 and ‘49 he was sick, his father died, and he and Emma had another son and he worked on other research.. His daughter Annie got sick in June 1850. She died April 1851.In 1852 he worked more on barnacle research.In spring 1853 he met HuxleyIn the spring of 1854 he was encouraged by all the new talk of evolution and progress. Darwin joined the Philosophical Club in London with the intention of seeking out naturalists that may be sympathetic to his transmutation theories. The club was being filled with a younger generation of naturalists, many of whom had been writing papers on the topic of evolution, but they were all conjectural. A comprehensive explanation of how evolution worked was still entirely unknown.In December of 1854 Darwin figured out how populations split off into separate species. Using the industrial revolution as a metaphor, he saw that populations of animals, like industry, expand and specialize to fit into niches with competition acting as the driving force. He saw nature as the ultimate "factory." However, Darwin preferred not to make much of this metaphor because it seemed to depend more on economic principles rather than pure science.In March, 1855, Darwin thought about was how species spread to other land masses - particularly islands like the Galapagos. One of the popular explanations at the time was the "sunken land bridge" hypothesis. Darwin doubted land bridges in the middle of the ocean, and set out to show that plants and animals could "float" their way to distant lands. He experimented with plant seeds, soaking them in sea water for up to months at a time, and then planted them. To the surprise of his fellow naturalists, nearly all of them germinated. He corresponded with inhabitants of islands, asking them to examine the shoreline for any seeds or plants not native to the island. He found that in some cases seed pods had floated thousands of miles across the ocean to distant islands. Darwin also recruited the help of British survey vessels and asked them if they ever noticed floating "land rafts" with animals on them, and this too was confirmed.In the spring of 1855 Darwin became caught up in the extremely popular avocation of breeding fancy pigeons. He studied their habits, experimented with cross breeding and back breeding, and kept meticulous notes on his observation.In the late spring of 1856, Lyell received a package from a young naturalist named Alfred Wallace. He was doing natural history research at the Malay Archipelago. It was a twenty page paper titled: "On the Law which has Regulated the Introduction of New Species." Lyell was interested because it contained ideas of transmutation that were similar to the ones Darwin had been working on for the past twenty years. He showed the paper to Darwin, but he was not too impressed with it.On April 13th 1856, Lyell was invited to Down House, and Darwin gave him an update on his transmutation work, telling him about his theory of natural selection. Although he did not agree with transmutation in general, (he feared the consequences if it was applied to humans); Lyell urged Darwin to publish his work.On May 14th Darwin started a short essay on his theory of natural selection.In July of 1857 Darwin was still working on his essay. He finished with the chapter on species variation. The "short essay" becoming a proper book.By March 1858 the chapter on natural selection was 65% complete. It was now 10 chapters.On June 18th Darwin received a paper from Wallace. He was still at the Malay Archipelago. The paper was titled: "On the Tendency of Varieties to Depart Indefinitely from the Original Type." Darwin was shocked. Wallace had come up with a theory of natural selection that was very similar to his own. But, Darwin thought that Wallace had some ideas about natural selection that he did not agree with. For one thing, Wallace tried to mix social morality with natural selection, proposing an upward evolution of human morals which would eventually lead to a socialist utopia (Darwin's natural selection had no goal). Also, Wallace's natural selection was guided by a higher spiritual power (there was no divine intervention in Darwin's version).In July 1858 Darwin presented his ideas to the Linnean Society along with those of Wallace.On November 22 1859, "Origin of Species" went on sale to the public today at a price of 15 shillings. 1,250 copies were printed, most of which sold the first day. It was an immediate success and Darwin started the same day editing the work for a second edition.We also know a great deal about Darwin’s beliefs, feelings and politics. Darwin came from a very strong anti-slavery abolitionist family. Today he would be a left of center person. He was on the Whig side of things, as was everyone in his family, including the Wedgwoods, and most of his friends. It is well known that Darwin, as well as his friends and family, were very much in favor of the Great Reform Act of 1832, which extended voting rights to millions of formally disenfranchised citizens. He was also a staunch supporter of the abolishment of slavery. He said he would not be a Tory “ on account of their cold hearts about that scandal to Christian Nations, Slavery.”"It does one's heart good to hear how things are going on in England. Hurrah for the honest Whigs. I trust they will soon attack that monstrous stain on our boasted liberty, Colonial Slavery. I have seen enough of Slavery & the disposition of the negros, to be thoroughly disgusted with the lies & nonsense one hears on the subject in England."-- To John Herbert on 2 June, 1833 from Maldonado, Rio Plata.He was fond of Austin, Gaskell, Lord Byron,Walter Scott, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Dickens, and Horace. All are typical of left-wing thinkers. He was well known for playing with his children a great deal in a time that it was very unusual for upper class men to do this. He was very much not an authoritarian father and respected their ideas and liberty in a very advanced way. He was very unusual for his class and time in the way he spent much of his life socializing with his wife and and kids. This is from his daughter’s memories:"Another characteristic of his treatment of his children was his respect for their liberty, and for their personality. Even as quite a little girl, I remember rejoicing in this sense of freedom. Our father and mother would not even wish to know what we were doing or thinking unless we wished to tell. He always made us feel that we were each of us creatures whose opinions and thoughts were valuable to him, so that whatever there was best in us came out in the sunshine of his presence."

Scientific knowledge is always provisional. We should be open to evidence disconfirming even cherished beliefs. That makes it all the more disconcerting that scientists like Jerry Coyne and Richard Dawkins should so vehemently assert that evolution is true and there can be no debate about it — “It is absolutely safe to say that if you meet somebody who claims not to believe in evolution, that person is ignorant, stupid or insane (or wicked, but I'd rather not consider that).” That sounds like religious dogma. It isn’t possible, according to them, to come to a different conclusion after evaluating the facts as a physicist might do when deciding which of the dozen or so interpretations of quantum mechanics he believes is correct. It isn’t even possible.I would consider the commonly cited evidence for evolution to be either inconclusive or equivocal. I think what we have are facts that are interpreted as evidence for different explanatory hypotheses. Let's take a few examples.DNA:There's no doubt that DNA is mutable and plays a key role in heredity. The modern neo-Darwinian synthesis puts random mutations in the driver’s seat. It is what natural selection operates on. So while natural selection itself is not random and it does explain some things, the features which increase an individual organism’s survival and that get passed on are a result, at least in part, of random genetic mutations. That raises a lot questions. Can single nucleotide mutations confer survival benefit? Are they selectable? If not, how many does it reasonably take? And what is the mutational load that organisms can survive? Furthermore, what is the likelihood of a beneficial mutation? The overwhelming majority of mutations are deleterious or neutral. As to the origin of DNA, how did a mindless purposeless process result in a coded system of chemistry complete with a storage system and transcription, translation, error detection/correction mechanisms? How did the information encoded in DNA result from a random mechanistic process? The cause now in operation that produces information (not merely order) is intelligence. Epigenetics just makes that problem worse for the standard evolutionary tale."[I]t seems to require many thousands, perhaps millions, of successive mutations to produce even the easiest complexity we see in life now. It appears, naively at least, that no matter how large the probability of a single mutation is, should it be even as great as one-half, you would get this probability raised to a millionth power, which is so very close to zero that the chances of such a chain seem to be practically non-existent." -- Stanislaw M. UlamIt’s not impossible that a simple mechanism can cause vast increases in complexity. Any arrangement of grains of sand on a seashore is complex and a simple mechanism, tidal waves, continuously alters that arrangement into other complex and equally improbable arrangements. But that is absolutely not what we are talking about. DNA isn’t just a randomly ordered chain of nucleotides. The sequence of the nucleotides is critical to the function of DNA. This was the significant insight of Francis Crick’s sequence hypothesis. Adenine, thymine, guanine and cytosine make up a chemical alphabet – 4 letters which spell out in triplets 21 amino acids, the sequence of which runs from the several hundred to over 30,000 necessary to make up a specific protein. So it’s not just complex, it’s complex and it’s specified – the pattern of nucleotides must conform to that of a protein needed by the organism. But what if any given protein could be constructed by literally millions of different combinations of amino acids so the order isn’t really that important? This has been the focus of research by molecular biologist Doug Axe at the Biologic Institute. The problem is that the sequence of amino acids dictates how the protein folds. And functional proteins aren’t simply 1-dimensional arrays of amino acids, they’re 3-dimensional structures that act like keys that must fit exactly in receptors (locks) in order to perform the desired function. Wrong sequence of amino acids - wrong folds - wrong shape - no function. So how rare are functional proteins? In researching this specific problem, Axe concluded, “the overall prevalence of sequences performing a specific function by any domain-sized fold may be as low as 1 in 10^77, adding to the body of evidence that functional folds require highly extraordinary sequences.” (Estimating the prevalence of protein sequences adopting functional enzyme folds.) I guess the good news is that it’s a 1000 times more likely than searching for a specific baryon (a subatomic particle with the mass of at least a proton) out of all the baryons in the known universe (estimated at 10^80). According to this guide from the Biologic Institute (Protein Evolution: A Guide for the Perplexed). for evolution to work, proteins need to be remarkably tolerant of sequence rearrangements, or remarkably easy to shift to new functions by amino acid substitutions, or functional sequences need to be quite common. Answers: they aren’t, it isn’t, they aren’t. Functional proteins are extremely rare and blindly mutating or rearranging DNA isn’t likely to find one, even given billions of years.Randomly mutating the sequences is destructive not constructive."[A]n opposite way to look at the genotype is as a generative algorithm and not as a blue-print; a sort of carefully spelled out and foolproof recipe for producing a living organism of the right kind if the environment in which it develops is a proper one. Assuming this to be so, the algorithm must be written in some abstract language. Molecular biology may well have provided us with the alphabet of this language, but it is a long step from the alphabet to understanding a language. Nevertheless a language has to have rules, and these are the strongest constraints on the set of possible messages. No currently existing formal language can tolerate random changes in the symbol sequences which express its sentences. Meaning is almost invariably destroyed. Any changes must be syntactically lawful ones. I would conjecture that what one might call "genetic grammaticality" has a deterministic explanation and does not owe its stability to selection pressure acting on random variation." -- Murray EdenAssessments of the feasibility of natural selection and random mutation are, at least at the popular level, frequently derived from simulations such as those by Richard Dawkins using a computer program to “evolve” to the phrase “METHINKS IT IS LIKE A WEASEL”. What most people seem to be unaware of is that the computer program (as most similar genetic simulations) was fine-tuned with unrealistic parameters for number of offspring, mutation rates, survivability, selection coefficient, and more. Making the simulation even less realistic is that it generates large numbers of dysfunctional intermediates and smuggles in an oracle. Natural selection “eliminates all that is bad”, dysfunctional intermediates don’t survive. For Dawkins simulation to be realistic in this sense it would have to be more like the word game where you start with a given word and must change one letter at a time to create new words that ultimately yield the game’s target word. His program doesn’t do that – its intermediates aren’t valid sentences, they’re just gibberish. The only advantage they have, per the simulation, is that they are “closer” to the target. And there’s the smuggled in oracle. Natural selection has no target. There is no goal. There’s nothing that measures match to a destination because it is, by definition, purposeless and unguided. Dawkins at least acknowledges this as a deficiency in his program. Such simulations aren't reasonable demonstrations of the feasibility of natural selection and random mutation. They aren't even facts, much less evidence.As a software engineer, the analogy of DNA to software resonates and likely influences some of what I find reasonable or feasible. Microsoft founder Bill Gates has said, “DNA is like a computer program but far, far more advanced than any software ever created.” Biotechnologist Craig Ventner stated, “Life is a DNA software system”. And then there’s the 98% of the human genome that doesn’t code for proteins which, in a failed retrodiction of evolutionary biology was called “Junk DNA”. This article from Genetic Engineering & Biotech News (What Junk DNA? It’s an Operating System | GEN Genetic Engineering & Biotechnology News - Biotech from Bench to Business | GEN) calls it an operating system.Today's answer to "What is life?" (a question posed by Erwin Schrodinger) is: it's software. Our uniform experience with software is that it is intelligently designed. Software runs on machines, also intelligently designed. Software operates other machines (e.g., robots) that are intelligently designed. Systems of interconnected software and hardware are irreducibly complex. Functional systems imply purposefully planned architecture of the whole. Software is comprised of information, which is immaterial. Information is independent of the storage medium bearing it (e.g., electrons, magnets, silicon chips, molecules of DNA). Meaningful information is aperiodic; so is DNA. As a form of information, DNA software is complex and specified. Epigenetics regulates genetics just as computer software can regulate other software. Software can improve over time, but only by intelligent design, not by random mutation. Software can contain bugs or become degraded and still be intelligently designed.Now a thought experiment: Take a complex piece of software like the Linux OS and start randomly changing it. Do you think the random changes would be more likely to improve or degrade the functioning of that software? Do you honestly believe that any amount of undirected changes over any period of time would suddenly manifest as a new graphical user interface, a compiler for a previously unsupported programming language, a device driver for a new hardware component? Oh, and add to that, following the evolutionary hypothesis, each change must be functional and must improve the system in some way (confer survival advantage). You can’t make a change, not have working software, make another change …In the real world, not working equals dead. You don’t survive, you don’t reproduce, any change you carried that might have eventually led to an evolutionary advantage is lost.Fossils:I would agree to the facts of a fossil record of past life on earth (that is, incidentally, a record of billions of years) that shows life forms have differences in preserved traits. We can see that organisms present today are different than those in the past. Some have been completely lost. Others seem to have survived but with variations. What that fossil record is and how it is interpreted are two different things.One fact we have in fossils is homology, an apparent similarity in structures. Is this evidence of ancestry? Homology was considered evidence of design long prior to it being claimed by Darwin as evidence for evolution. And to show that fossil remains X was ancestral to fossil remains Y is problematic. Is Archaeopteryx a dinosaur becoming a bird? Where’s the DNA evidence for that? Has anyone shown specifically what DNA changes had to occur to transform a dinosaur into a bird? Or even into Archaeopteryx? How about just scales into feathers? Nevermind the Cambrian Explosion and the infusion of novel DNA that was necessary to introduce something like 18 new phyla in a “geologic instant” of time. As Michael Shermer enjoys pointing out, we are pattern seeking primates but our pattern detection device is susceptible to cognitive priming. Biologists have for over a century had their pattern detection devices primed to find evidences of evolution. Why should I think homology is anything more than an illusion of similarity with just-so stories as “explanations”? Structures that appear to be homologous have been found to have non-homologous genetic origins and developmental pathways. Phylogenetic trees cited as proof of evolutionary ancestry were long constructed from morphological similarities (homologies) but recent efforts to construct corresponding phylogenetic trees using molecular biology (genetic characteristics) have run into serious incongruences and radically different results. Even sticking within the Darwinian model similarity is oft explained not by ancestry but by convergence. The eye, for example, is said to have independently evolved dozens, maybe a hundred, times. Why? Because common ancestry is “true” and we cannot trace all animals with eyes back to common ancestors in which the structure originated.Numerous fossils have been found resembling horses and assembled into what is believed to be an ancestral record for horse evolution. *Believed* is key here. For it is with an assumption of the truth of the theory of universal common descent that the fossils are interpreted into a phylogenetic tree that biologists then *claim* tells a story of not just descent with modification but origin of species and even phyla. But does it? The fallacy is evident in what evolutionary biologist Tim Berra wrote in his 1990 book *Evolution and the Myth of Creationism: A Basic Guide to the Facts in the Evolution Debate*, "If you compare a 1953 and a 1954 Corvette, side by side, then a 1954 and a 1955 model, and so on, the descent with modification is overwhelmingly obvious. This is what paleontologists do with fossils, and the evidence is so solid and comprehensive that it cannot be denied by reasonable people." Really? And this summary of a study from the University of Adelaide (DNA study sheds new light on horse evolution) published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (Revising the recent evolutionary history of equids using ancient DNA) claims if I read it correctly that much of what has been traditionally called different species are really just variances within a single species of horse over time and space. There are numerous other problems with the standard tale of horse evolution that do not tell the simplistic conclusive story that is usually proffered.Peppered moths:Frequently cited as proof of evolution when all we really have facts for is adaptation, if it was even that. This cannot reasonably be extrapolated into a mechanism for speciation and phylogenesis, even in deep geologic time. The moths were already there. The wings were there. Color variation was already there. Frequency of color variation in a moth population, while perhaps a good thing, isn’t evidence for evolution of one species into another. In the case of long term experiments like the Lenski E. Coli, loss-of-function and decrease-of-function mutation cannot be extrapolated into the necessary mechanism to introduce novel DNA for new function. Other researchers already knew about E. Coli’s ability to metabolize citrate in the presence of oxygen and have shown that identical results can be reproduced in weeks, not decades. After 60,000 generations, the E. Coli was still E. Coli.So the question isn’t, at least for me, what evidence is there but what is the best explanation for the evidence. I’m skeptical of random mutation and natural selection as an explanation for the evidence unless you exclude other possibilities with an accompanying a priori commitment to only allow material causes (i.e., a Richard Lewontin maneuver). But why would someone honestly seeking answers do that?Perhaps one problem in having this discussion is that almost all evolutionary literature equivocates on the definition of evolution, at various time referring to#1: Life forms we see today are different than the life forms that existed in the distant past aka Descent with Modification. There have been minor changes in features of individual species (e.g. beaks of Galapagos finches) — personally, I have no problem with this whatsoever.#2: All organisms are descended from a single common ancestor somewhere in the distant past aka Theory of Universal Common Descent from which we get the iconic great branching tree of life. — not convinced of a single universal common ancestor but I think I agree with multiple common ancestors originating at the level of the phyla as in the Cambrian Explosion. “The evolutionary trees that adorn our textbooks have data only at the tips and nodes of their branches; the rest is inference, however reasonable, not the evidence of fossils.” - Stephen Jay Gould#3: A cause or mechanism of change, the biological process thought responsible for this branching pattern. Darwin argued that natural selection had the power to produce fundamentally new forms of life. — natural selection happens and can be observed in adaptation to habitat change. I think the extrapolation from that to wholesale morphological change is unwarranted.Facts in evidence for #1 are not also evidence for #2 (universal common descent) and #3 (large scale morphological change).So there are facts but what is it evidence for? As said to me recently, “What is more impressive than a machine (i.e., the cell) that can change itself and increase in complexity”. With perhaps the substitution of a different phrase for “increase in complexity”, I couldn’t agree more. Biology is breathtaking. As I see it, the live explanatory options for the origin of such a “machine” are necessity, chance, and design.Necessity would claim that it had to be — given initial conditions and laws of physics and chemistry, DNA, the cell with it’s nano-technology, etc., were all inevitable. A proponent of this idea, Dean Kenyon, now Professor Emeritus of Biology at San Francisco State University, wrote a book with Gary Steinman in 1969 called *Biochemical Predestination* that argued: "Life might have been biochemically predestined by the properties of attraction that exist between its chemical parts, especially between amino acids in proteins." In 1975 Kenyon began to doubt that self-organization could give rise to the information in DNA, seeing proteins as poor templates for the transfer of information. He no longer subscribes to his own theory. In 1967, philosopher Michael Polanyi wrote an article for Chemical & Engineering News entitled *Life Transcending Physics and Chemistry* in which he argued that even if living organisms function like machines, they cannot be fully explained by reference to the laws of physics and chemistry. To summarize the idea, DNA contains information it communicates to the cell that cannot be reduced to physics and chemistry any more than the information contained on the page of a book can be reduced to the chemistry of ink and paper.Chance would claim it was just an accident — “some warm little pond with all sorts of ammonia and phosphoric salts, light, heat, electricity etcetera present, that a protein compound was chemically formed, ready to undergo still more complex change.”, to quote Darwin. Perhaps such a view was sustainable in Darwin’s day when the cell was thought to be little more than a microscopic bag of protoplasm and DNA was unknown. But assembling amino acids into a functional protein chain is a combinatorial problem involving peptide bonding, chirality and sequence. The simplest form of life requires something like 250 to 400 proteins, and each protein consists on average of 300 to 400 amino acids. The space of functional protein sequences is minute when compared to the combinatorial space of possible sequences making such sequences incredibly rare so finding just one through an unguided search would be highly improbable, much less the hundreds necessary for the simplest life. David Berlinksi remarks, “No one denies that random events take place within molecular biological systems. The relevant question is how. In a formal context, the matter is not a mystery. Codes may be designed to remain robust in the face of background noise; what is required is redundancy, and the genetic code is, in point of fact, highly redundant. In communication systems, redundancy appears as a matter of design. It does not arise spontaneously. In the case of the genetic code, according to one commentator, "strong selection pressures" created the requisite redundancy. But this is to dispel one mystery by promoting another.”Design would claim that an intelligence using principles we have come to recognize as information theory and systems engineering produced this advanced artifact, perhaps introducing information at multiple points in geologic history (e.g., origin of life, Cambrian Explosion, …) I think design is a better alternative to explain the evidence than a mindless purposeless mechanistic process. The obvious first Dawkins-esque objection is who designed the designer. I dismiss that as irrelevant because I don’t need to know that to recognize something as designed; it isn’t necessary to have an explanation of the explanation to recognize it as the best, that would lead to an infinite regress of explanations. SETI works on this premise — if astronomers ever detect a signal they attribute to ETs, they will have done so based on intelligent design principles and won’t find it necessary to be able to explain anything about the civilization that produced it to come to that conclusion. I find it logically inconsistent that someone would reject design as an explanation because we don’t have an explanation of the origin of the designer and not also reject natural selection because we don’t have an explanation of the origin of the first self-replicating molecule. British philosopher Anthony Flew, long an atheist, claimed it was the findings of molecular biology convinced him that a "Super-intelligence is the only good explanation for the origin of life and the complexity of nature." Dr. Flew said his life had always been guided by the Socratic principle to follow the evidence wherever it leads. He was convinced that the evidence now pointed to at least a Deist conception of God as true. British astronomer Fred Hoyle, also an athiest, said something similar: "A common sense interpretation of the facts suggests that a super intellect has monkeyed with physics, as well as with chemistry and biology, and that there are no blind forces worth speaking about in nature."I don’t see necessity or chance as particularly reasonable choices. Design appears to be a much better explanation. Same facts, different conclusion.

There is in fact a midpoint between powered flight and not flying. It is gliding.Powered flight has evolved in four completely unrelated lineages. All are incredibly successful. It is clear that flight is something that gives big advantage. Insects, pterosaurs, birds, and bats all have (had) powered flight. There are roughly between 9,000 and 10,000 species of birds. There are over 1,100 different species of bats that have been identified. This is approximately ¼ of all of the mammals in the world. More than 900,000 species of insects on Earth are classified as Pterygota, or winged insects. Insects were the first to evolve flight, approximately 350 million years ago. There are flying insects in the orders Odonta, Plecoptera , Orthoptera, Isoptera, Ephemeroptera, Trichoptera, Dictyoptera, Hemiptera, Hymenoptera, Lepidoptera, Coleoptera, and Diptera. Pterosaurs are the earliest vertebrates known to have evolved powered flight. They lived 228 to 66 million years ago. We don’t know for sre how many types there were.Gliding which comes intermediate between flight and non flight is much more common than powered flight. It has evolved in a number of utterly unrelated animals.Here are flying squid.Is it a bird? Is it a plane? No, it's a squidThere are about 64 species are grouped in seven to nine genera of flying fish belonging to the family Exocoetidae. Aerodynamic characteristics of flying fish in gliding flightAnd other types of fish called half beaks. A twist in the tail: Flying fish give clues to 'tandem wing' airplane designBallooning spiders (parachuting) and Gliding spidersGliding ants Discovery Of Gliding Ants Shows Wingless Flight Has Arisen Throughout The Animal KingdomGliding has evolved independently in two families of tree frogs, on n the Old World and one in the New.28 species of lizard of the genus Draco that glide.There are also other types of flying lizards and geckos.Flying snakes are able to glide better than flying squirrels. There are five recognized species of flying snake. Researchers reveal secrets of snake flightThere are 43 species of flying squirrel in 14 genera.Colugos are a relative to the lemur and can glide.flying phalangersGreater gliderFeather-tailed possumsFlight and the near flight behavior of gliding is extremely common. There are clear steps between gliding and flight. However, it is a fact that there is only one species that has evolved complex symbolic communication and higher technology. That is humans. It is most likely does not offer a great advantage. There are many intermediate steps, but one one that moved as far along this path.