Why Darwin Matters_ The Case Against Intelligent Design - Michael Shermer [39]
Instead of eyes evolving forty or more different times in evolutionary history, it appears that this simple genetic complex led to the embryological development and evolutionary refinement of a two-part system; in some species one part is incorporated, and in others both are.
More generally, instead of an extensive genetic tool kit with genes for constructing each and every bodily structure, evo-devo shows that a small set of gene complexes such as the Hox genes and the Pax-6 genes are expressed in novel ways that can generate large-scale changes in a nonincremental fashion. This explains why the human genome is not especially different from the mouse genome. It is not the number of genes that counts so much as how genes are turned on or off. Evolution involves old genes developing new tricks.
Second, a species is a group of actually or potentially interbreeding natural populations reproductively isolated from other such populations. We see evolution at work in nature today, isolating populations and creating new species, that is, new populations reproductively isolated from other such populations. As the new isolated populations drift genetically away from the parent populations, they eventually can no longer interbreed, making new species.46 If evolution can do this, why can’t it also create higher-order categories of organisms?
Third, some speciation may be precipitated by characteristics adapted to distinct environments that then drive populations into reproductive isolation, which leads to the creation of a new species. Similarly, sexual selection—female mate selection of males—may drive populations to diverge into different species. If females prefer certain traits in males, such as coloration, within one population, the males can change so dramatically that they are no longer appealing to females of another population, thereby making the two populations reproductively isolated: thus a new species. Research shows that speciation occurs more often in polygamous species than in monogamous species, further evidence linking sexual selection to the origin of new species.47
Fourth, to turn the tables on Intelligent Design theorists, how does Intelligent Design explain micro and macro forms? Did the Intelligent Designer personally tinker with the DNA of every single organism in a population? Or did the ID simply tweak the DNA of just one organism and then isolate that organism to start a new population? When and where did the ID intervene in the history of life? Did the ID create each genus and evolution then create each species? Or did the ID create each species and evolution create each subspecies? Most Intelligent Design theorists accept natural selection as a viable explanation for microevolution—the beak of the finch, the neck of the giraffe, the varieties of subspecies found on earth. If natural selection can create subspecies, why not species, genera, families, and on up the classification scale to kingdoms?
Last, just because Intelligent Design theorists cannot think of how nature could have created something through evolution, that does not mean that scientists will not be able to do so either. Intelligent Design is a remarkably uncreative theory that abandons the search for understanding at the very point where it is most needed. If Intelligent Design is really a science, then the burden is on its scientists to discover the mechanisms used by the Intelligent Designer. And if those mechanisms turn out to be natural forces, then no supernatural force is necessary, and they can simply change their name to evolutionary scientists and get to work.
The Second Law of Thermodynamics makes evolution impossible.
According to the laws of physics, entropy increases—systems change from hot to cold, from ordered to disordered, and from complex to simple. Yet evolutionists state that the universe and life move from chaos to order and from simple to complex, the exact opposite of the entropy predicted by the Second Law of Thermodynamics. Creationist Henry Morris stated the argument thus: “Evolutionists have fostered