Two Influential 19th Century Thinkers: Richard Dawkins and Jerry Coyne

In the closing paragraph of the preface to my 1992 book Cancer Selection (1) I wrote the following:

The question of whether evolution took place–the argument between Darwinists and creationists–was settled in the last century. The Darwinists won.

One would hope that the victorious Darwinians and their professional descendants would have moved on to other puzzling evolutionary problems such as "How could the same mechanisms that produced mushrooms, pine trees, jellyfish and other relatively simple multicells have possibly produced all the infinitely more complex Bilaterian animals, including humans?"

One would expect that some evolutionists would have realized that the existence of the Bilaterian animals–the most complex objects known to exist in the universe–announce, implicitly but
emphatically, that they were the products of a spectacularly efficient system. Why didn't some professionals devote their intellects to understanding the components of that system? It seems to me that a few minutes thought on the fact of complex animal evolution would lead one to conclude that spectacular feats of systems engineering and quality control must have been involved. Yet the literature seems to be completely silent on such matters; it shrugs and says the origin and evolution of Bilaterians "just happened."

Instead, consider what two prominent evolutionary biologists–Richard Dawkins and Jerry Coyne–consider is worthy of their time and intellectual effort: attacking the beliefs of today's creationists, people who believe in the existence of supernatural beings. Both Dawkins and Coyne have devoted entire books to that end. A visit to the web sites of either will lead one to suspect that devotion to what might be called "anti-religion evangelism" is now their primary interest. (2)   

Further reading:

Richard Dawkins Climbs Mount Impossible

How Did Bilaterian Evolution Happen? 

This is Not the "Chicken or the Egg?" Question

Twenty-Five Questions Not Solved by Conventional Evolutionary Theory

Notes.

(1)  Cancer Selection by James Graham, Aculeus Press 1992.

(2)  Having learned that academic Biology seems to be infested with persons who are deficient in reading comprehension, I hasten to correct anyone who assumes that because I am criticizing well-known atheists I must believe in the existence of supernatural beings. I do not.

At this site you will find links to additional material including my original Letters to the Journal of Theoretical Biology and the 1992 Nature review of my book.

Copyright © 2018 by James Graham

This site is archived at Way Back Machine.