Darwin's Doubt
The theory of intelligent design is best explained by the appearances of animals in fossil form without any apparent precursor. Stephen Meyer argues that scientists have found no way yet to account for the Cambrian explosion. Different life forms appeared with no obvious beginning and too quickly to happen from a random process of mutation and survival of the fittest. Meyer says the only other solution or alternative to this explanation is the involvement of an intelligent designer or being. This “being,” meaning God who moved things along quickly for the starting of earth. Charles Darwin knew that there was something out of the ordinary something very significant in the event of our life’s history. In theory it is known that “Cambrian explosion” occurred almost 530 million years ago and animal’s fossils started to suddenly appear on record with no apparent ancestor background in the earlier layer of the rocks. In the book “Darwin’s Doubt”, Darwin suggests a theory of evolution and how life evolves gradually and morphs over time, and but having a whole new idea in this insists which is existed already won’t suddenly appear again later. But in Cambrian layer of rocks have seemed to have new kinds of life exploding from it. It seemed to be that Darwin was puzzled himself by the origin of species and what truly accounts for the producing and the explosion of it. The question in the book aims for triggering or observing the “intelligent design movement” in the argument of Darwin’s doubt, scientist have not found a way yet to account for the explosion of Cambrian which life forms appeared which no obvious conclusion or precursors. Explaining this would be default by just saying it was random process or survival of the fittest approach but these types of approaches have been going on for decades. In the book Meyer talks about that if there’s any sort of involvement there’s a intelligent designer behind it who is God and moved the story of life on earth at a rapidly fast pace. The intelligent design movement has been around for quite some time now and tries to closely analyze the creation of science. Meyer has an issue that is hard to be recognize. The Cambrian explosion but has been on earth for decades. For example, monkeys evolving into humans and then discovery of fossils around the different parts of the world. Meyer identifies that there was a sudden appearance of large amount of animals and each animal has a more complex design. Meyer on Darwin’s explanations goes on to say that behind design of life and how it works there’s a intelligent designer behind it. But there are multiple counterexamples against Meyer’s argument; any genetic “machinery” its genes can be duplicated and these duplicated genes can have new functions. Darwin wanted to let people know that these long periods of time elapsed before the Cambrian was shown talks about the Silurian age to this present day and in between having some unknown periods of “living creatures”. Having creatures that did come before the Cambrian era their were not that many varieties of species according to Meyer, having advancements in life are in reality are different forms of DNA. “Building a fundamentally new form of life from a simpler form of life requires an immense amount of new information.”(Meyer Pg. 32) Randomly generating this level of quality DNA seems unrealistic to what Meyer is thinking. The key to Darwin’s Doubt is an exploration of why and when an increase in functional DNA based information could not come about through as neo-Darwinian evolution alone. Meyer addresses some possible connections to materialistic evolution by looking at four different key issues: Time needed to generate genetic material that can be usable, development of DNA and mutations that are occurring, DNA and new life forms that are built, and random processes that are generating genetic material. Darwin himself fought with the idea of how DNA works or how genetics worked on a cellular level. In neo-Darwinian world today it is understood that mutations are speciation, having cellular mutations are a common for example having birth defects, such as color blindness, or one ear-deaf. Meyer says and explains that even if there is a mutation that is considered neutral or beneficial their needs to be enough coordinated mutations that are present to generate a new protein fold. Protein folds represent the smallest structural innovation that can occur in natural selection and according to Meyer calculations these natural selection actions are high unlikely. Another point in Meyer book deals with population genetics, population and size that it is growing at, its reproduction rate and the amount of mutation rates are at steady rates. Natural selection has diminished the need for genetic fitness it takes quite about of time for genetic information to transition to a new type of creature. The standard for neo-Darwinian mechanism is to generate a least two coordinated mutations but duration of these mutations can be long duration of times and can exceed the duration of life on earth, and having large amounts of population sizes. These populations are exceeding the amount of multicellular organisms that have ever existed. Genetic needs a good amount of timing to develop impact; mutations Meyer talks about are evolutionary lifetime of species, when populations are still small larger populations are being removed by natural selection. Meyer discusses information associated with epigenetics which is content that is stored by cell structures but in the DNA sequences. Information is a essential part of the overall body plan of an animal or any kind of specie from a single cell to its full potential size. Darwin’s theory besides the DNA and cellular mechanism thought to be thinking about fossils and them being found much later on which having a faith tradition relied with evolutionary evidence. Meyer’s own doubts about Darwin’s theories had him undirected Meyer’s has strong direction towards intelligent design, he says: “Our uniform experience of cause and effect shows that intelligent design is the only known cause of the origin of large amounts of functionally specified digital information. It follows that the great infusion of such information in the Cambrian explosion points decisively to an intelligent cause.” ( ) The nature of information, whether in human writing or DNA can preclude natural forces from being existence and generating from it. DNA can hold precise information there is no need for natural force demanding another location all information requires a type of contingency this openness to have information stored in different ways. After reading “Darwin’s Doubt” I don’t know exactly why animals evolved rapidly without any reasoning behind it, but there should not be any doubt to the facts of evolution and the purpose of God creating life on earth.