Weighing macro- and micro-evolutionists

IN (“WRITER tries to muddy evolutionary waters”, Cape Argus, September 9) Ian Flint states that coelacanths did not evolve into terrestrial quadrupeds but that terrestrial quadrupeds evolved from a lobe fin fish of which coelacanths are a living example.

A living example of what?

Yes, a living example of a living fish that is still living in the water and not living on land, despite all the alternative claims. This is a good example of the difference between micro-evolutionists such as myself and macro-evolutionists such as Ian Flint. Micro-evolutionists observe and deduce through empirical science that fish can adapt, interbreed, evolve and evolutionise (if you so wish) so that you get vast kinds of different fish with some living in salty sea water, some in clear river water while some apparently like muddy water, but they will always remain fish of one or other kind, with there being a phyla or fish species barrier beyond which natural selection cannot take them in order to evolve into nonfish species. Macro-evolutionists such as Ian Flint apply extrapolation and believe with great faith that since there are certain physical similarities between fish and human beings, fish must have evolved through natural selection into human beings, given enough time over hundreds of millions of years. As a scientist, I am still looking for that fish that muddied the evolutionary waters and dogmatically decided it rather wanted to become a human being.

This fishy muddy evolutionary water debate is simply part of a much bigger debate, of the origin and progress of mankind. Most people do not accept the macro evolutionary view which Ian propagates whereby mankind and everything else arose by pure chance and per fluke ended in mankind.

Francis Crick, Nobel-winning scientist, became so disillusioned with the glaring shortcomings of Darwin’s macro-evolutionary theory, that he created a theory called “panspermia”. In terms of this, life came here from outer space.

Although a bit far fetched, it makes much more sense than macro evolutionary theory, whereby life evolved out of nothing, and the ancestral fish and ancestral shrew, by some weird inexplicable fate was able to evolve all by itself as a result of pure chance into shrewd, and often not so shrewd, human beings.

A good book which gives an overview of the different viewpoints in this major debate, is Debating Design – from Darwin to DNA, published by Cambridge University Press. It is co-edited “by Michael Ruse (an arch Darwinist) and William Dembski (an arch Intelligent Design proponent)”.

Twenty-two participating scientists and philosophers of science discuss the four main positions: Darwinism and macro-evolutionary theory, Self-Organisation, Theistic Evolution, and Intelligent Design.