Darwin’s Finches: An Example of How Evidence for Evolution Works

Leading evolutionist Jerry Coyne presented Geospiza fortis as an evidence for evolution at a recent talk at Harvard in what continues to be a good example of the strong metaphysics and weak science behind evolution. Recall that the Galapagos finches provided one of Darwin’s many metaphysical arguments for his idea that the species must have arisen on their own. As Carl Zimmer explained in his book Evolution: The Triumph of an Idea:

Something, Darwin realized, was very wrong. Why should there be so many unique species on these similar islands? … Perhaps the finches had not been created in their current form. Perhaps they had evolved. [33]

It wasn’t that the evidence revealed how evolution could possibly create a finch; rather, the evidence was showing that they wouldn’t have been created. For if the finches on those different islands were different species, as Darwin anticipated in a famous notebook entry, it “would undermine the stability of species.”

Evolutionary metaphysics run deep and drive the science to where it shouldn’t go. This brings us back to those finches which not only provide powerful metaphysical arguments but also rather silly scientific arguments.

What is fascinating is that evolutionists believe they have found yet more powerful evidence for their idea. It is another example of how theology drives the science in evolutionary thought.

The story is that in 1977 a drought in the Galapagos Islands left a severe shortage of small seeds that G. fortis fed on. The majority of the population died off leaving only the larger birds with larger beaks which could feed off of larger seeds.

Naturally subsequent generations of G. fortis had larger beaks. As the years passed the population returned toward its pre drought state with more of the smaller beaks, but for a few generations the drought had caused a significant change in the population.

Amazingly evolutionists advertise this as powerful evidence of evolution by natural selection occurring before our very eyes. As Coyne concludes in his book Why Evolution is True:

This is a staggering rate of evolutionary change—far larger than anything we see in the fossil record. … Everything we require of evolution by natural selection was amply documented by the Grants in other studies: individuals in the original population varied in beak depth, a large proportion of that variation was genetic, and individuals with different beaks left different numbers of off-spring in the predicted direction. [134]

Everything we require? A drought occurred and the majority of a bird population died off leaving only the larger birds which could access different food sources. And that’s powerful evidence of evolution? You’re joking right? This reasoning is absurd.

The variation was already present in the finch population before the drought occurred. That’s why the change could happen so fast. The average beak size increased, as evolutionists continue to point out, because the vast majority of the smaller birds died off, not because any new design was created. As usual, natural selection merely killed off the unfit designs.

Over the years evolutionists have presented a great many evidences for their theory. But while the metaphysics make for a powerful and compelling argument, the science is inevitably weak or flawed. Darwin’s finches are no different.

More Evidence of Adaptive Mutations: Adaptation by Directed Modification Rather Than Selection, Lamarck N, Darwin 0

One of the major pillars of evidence claimed for the fact of evolution is the adaptation in populations that we observe. As Ernst Mayr—one of the leading evolutionists in the twentieth century—wrote in his Toward a New Philosophy of Biology, “evolutionary change is also simply a fact owing to the changes in the content of gene pools from generation to generation.” This equating of minor change—even a mere change in gene frequencies within a population—with all of evolution is rampant within evolutionary apologetics. For example in the first 20 seconds of the recent Let’s Talk About Evolution video Professor Marta Wayne tells viewers that “Evolution is change in gene frequency” and science writer Emily Willingham defines evolution as “a change in population over time.” Similarly in this video Professor Pamela Bjorkman states that a mutating virus is “evolution at work” and that “In the same way, people have evolved, but over a much slower time scale.”

But are allele frequency changes and virus mutations tantamount to evolution?

The answer is “no” for several reasons. First, there is no proof that such small-scale change can add up to the massive changes—including everything from molecular machines to body plans—that evolution requires. Evolutionists are fully aware of this and in their “honest moments” (as Stephen Jay Gould once put it) admit this to each other. As we understand them small-scale mechanisms of change, such as random mutations, simply do not provide the degree or type of change needed by evolution.

Furthermore, in the past century another category of evidence has arisen that highlights the failure of this pillar of evolution: The small-scale change mechanisms themselves are highly complex. In other words, if evolution is true then it created incredibly complex cellular and molecular mechanisms so that, yes, evolution could occur.

One example of this are the so-called adaptive mutations. These mutations are not random with respect to need, as evolutionists have insisted, but rather are often the right one for the need at hand. In other words, when faced with a challenging environment populations respond with changes that meet the new challenges.

Whereas evolution requires random changes that ever so slowly are produced by undirected mutations, science reveals just the opposite: rapid change brought about by non random adaptive mutations which meet the current environmental challenge, as one recent paper from Israel demonstrated. The paper first explained that in neo-Darwinism heritable diversity comes from:

neutral and advantageous mutations that occur rarely, spontaneously at random locations, and independently of any selection processes imposed by the environmental conditions.

But biological designs comprise a vast combinatorial space and so:

it is reasonable to hypothesize that existing and rare genetic variation cannot provide an immediate advantageous solution

Indeed. But there is dearth of knowledge of how adaptation occurs, for:

Little information exists on the dynamics of processes that lead to functional biological novelties and the intermediate states of evolving forms.

Their results provide hints, however, for contra evolutionary theory they found heritable adaptation which “must have been induced in individual cells by this environment.” They conclude:

This study, therefore, details a process that is different from the fundamental common view of adaptation. Here adaptation seems not to rely on random and rare genetic variability that accumulated independently from the selection agent. …

Thus, adaptation in our experiments was a property of individual cells rather than a property of the population and the process that led each cell to the adapted state was induced by the challenging environment. In fact, further findings corroborated this striking result. …

Notably, the decline in the adaptive potential over time argues against the existence of an advantageous subpopulation during phase I and supports the notion that adaptation was achieved by cells only after the transition into the challenging environment. …

These adjustments, as we have shown, can be rapidly gained by individual cells and stably propagated for many generations and, thus, should be considered an adaptation that might have a significant role in evolution of regulatory systems. …

cells acquired adaptive mutations (mutations directed at advantageous positions) at a very high rate after the exposure to glucose. …

adaptive mutations might arise as a response to stressful environments and allow such a widespread adaptation of individuals and the rapid adaptation of the whole population. …

Thus, our experiments prove the existence of a cellular mechanism enabling an inherited cellular adaptation that was induced by an unforeseen challenge in many cells simultaneously. …

The implications of such a mechanism are far reaching in diverse areas of biology; …

In other words, these results indicate a built-in response mechanism. The population of cells rapidly and efficiently adjusts to the environmental challenge and these changes are passed on to later generations.

These types of results contradict evolutionary theory and evolutionists have resisted them all along. I once debated an evolution professor who dismissed such evidence and assured the audience it was all false. This is how science works for evolutionists. Theory first, evidence second.

The claim that adaptive change is a proof text for all of evolution is an incredible misrepresentation of the scientific evidence. It is an equivocation on evolution so over the top it is difficult to believe. Indeed, it is astonishing to see evolutionists such as Mayr, Bjorkman, Wayne and the rest make such statements with a straight face.

Religion drives science, and it matters.

A Question for Jonathan Weiner

Pulitzer Prize-winning author and professor Jonathan Weiner will be giving the second lecture of the Darwin Celebratory Lectures on the topic of variation. Weiner's award winning book, The Beak of the Finch, documents the adaptive variations observed in the finches on the Galapagos islands. Such adaptive change is both rapid and intelligent. For instance, the beaks of the finches adapted to changes brought about by drought years. It is another piece of evidence that species have incredible adaptive abilities, not that reptiles changed into birds.

The observed changes are brought about by a sophisticated adaptation machine that we are only beginning to figure out. Evolution does not explain the machine, much less why such adaptation should be viewed as evidence for large-scale, macro evolutionary change. Indeed, evolutionists in the know have long since questioned the notion that adaptive change leads to the needed macro evolutionary change.

So why do evolutionists routinely claim that adaptive change is powerful evidence--observable proof of evolution? Weiner's lecture will focus on chapters one and two of Darwin's book and here we find a clue. Darwin discusses biological variation and in the summary of chapter two he states that the evidences he has presented "are utterly inexplicable if species are independent creations." And if the species were not independently created then they must have evolved, one way or another.

Obviously Darwin had a specific idea in mind of what the species should look like if they had been independently created. The idea came from the eighteenth century Swedish mastermind botanist Carl Von Linne, and for evolutionists its falsification proves their theory.

Biological variation and adaptation demonstrate evolution not because they ultimately supply the needed large-scale change, but because they refute the alternative. As explained in Darwin's God:

Linnaeus’ fixity of species concept could accommodate an old earth, with its multiple creation events or successive revolutions. It could even accommodate extinctions. But it could not survive if science were to find that new species were routinely created by unguided natural forces.

Linnaeus was troubled when he discovered hybrids—species that are produced by the crossing of two related species—and he later softened his doctrine of fixity of species. But this was inconsequential: his system with its conception of species became deeply rooted, and the nineteenth century began with the notion of species as immutable still strongly in place.

This notion was increasingly being challenged but it was nonetheless a major obstacle for Darwin to overcome.

It was therefore highly significant when Darwin became persuaded that related populations of birds he saw at the Gallapagoes were actually different species. If there was the slightest foundation for this idea, Darwin had written in a famous notebook entry, it “would undermine the stability of species.”

The birds did not suddenly reveal to Darwin how fishes could change to amphibians, or how amphibians could change to reptiles, or how reptiles could change to mammals. Rather, the revelation was that the idea of creation held by the modern mind, was suddenly becoming untenable. The crucible for Darwin was not an abundance of positive evidence for evolution but rather negative evidence against creation.

Evolutionist Ernst Mayr has pointed out that Darwin’s conversion from creationist to materialist was due to three key scientific findings and later reinforced by several additional findings. These scientific findings were all findings against creation. In other words, the key evidence that swayed Darwin was not direct evidence for evolution but rather evidence against creation that indirectly argued for evolution.

And as Mayr further points out, the doctrine of fixity of species was a key barrier to overcome in order if the concept of evolution was to flourish:

"Darwin called his great work On the Origin of Species, for he was fully conscious of the fact that the change from one species into another was the most fundamental problem of evolution. The fixed, essentialistic species was the fortress to be stormed and destroyed; once this had been accomplished, evolutionary thinking rushed through the breach like a flood through a break in a dike."

The pre-Darwinian metaphysic was that species were fixed and essentialistic. Evidence for small-scale change argued against the old view and in so doing became important evidence for evolution.

The question for Weiner is then: Is it proper for scientists to incorporate metaphysical assumptions in their theories? Religion drives science, and it matters.