Making Sentience

At the Dawkins evening one of the questions was about sentience and how it could have arisen. The answer given was that it must have been through natural selection but no one knows how. It would be easy to jump right in to the old ‘god of the gaps’ trap here and say ‘Aha! That’s the bit that God did!’ but that would be foolish. A) because the gap may close and B) because the implication is that God wasn’t involved in any other part.

By natural selection or some other means God has created us as sentient beings. What that means is that we are aware of ourselves. If you think about it, the most logical way for a completely natural process to go would be toward something akin to a computer i.e. something capable of completing tasks of ever-increasing complexity but without ever actually being self-aware. It’s amazing how far artificial intelligence has come, we only have to look at computer games to see that, but it is a completely blind intelligence

Yet we are not computers. We have a highly developed sense of who we are and who others are. God has created us to be aware of ourselves, and aware of Him.

The whole tooth

All good scientific ideas have the power to make predictions. When these predictions are put to the test they can testify to the truth of the idea. Here’s an example.

Now most mammals have teeth but some, such as anteaters or baleen whales, don’t. Evolutionary theory suggests that these toothless creatures evolved from ancestors that did have teeth. So here’s the prediction. We should be able to scan the genome of the animals with no teeth and find the remnants of tooth-making genes still present. Its like digging in the sand for the broken relics of a foregone era.

As most people know teeth are covered in a hard outer shell known as enamel. One of the key genes in enamel production is called enamelin. Researchers have looked for the broken pseudogenes of enamelin in mammals without teeth and, as predicted by evolutionary theory, they’ve found them. The family tree above maps it all out.

A date with Dawkins

I've just returned from an interview and Q&A with Richard Dawkins. Surprisingly it was quite enjoyable!

Dawkins' recent book 'The Greatest Show on Earth' aims to lay out the scope of the evidence for evolution. The problem has always been that whilst his previous books (or at least the ones I've read) have always contained well-written popular science, they have also dripped with the anti-religious venom. Bowlfuls of it.

If this evening is anything to go by Dawkins may finally be starting to separate the teaching of science from the proselytizing of atheism. In an hour long session there were only one or two barbed comments, the rest was all about science. Questions ranged from the application of Darwinism to economics, to how evolution will respond to climate change - all interesting stuff.

My own journey from Young Earth Creationism then Old Earth Creationism through to Theistic Evolution has been helped firstly by Christians who have illustrated there is nothing to fear in evolution, and secondly science writers who stick to science. Dawkins' books have actually been an obstacle to my education.

So if this really is a change in attitude and a leopard really can change its spots (evolution in action!) then we could all be better off.

Are humans evolving?

Yes we are. In general the speed of evolution depends on how well an organism is adapted to its environment. If it is really well adapted then evolution will be slow because there won’t be many beneficial mutations. On the other hand it is not very well adapted – so there’s loads of room for improvement – then evolution will occur quickly (relative to geological time that is!)

The authors of this paper write:

‘The past 10,000 years have seen rapid skeletal and dental evolution in human populations and the appearance of many new genetic responses to diets and disease.’

They go on to find evidence for selection pressures acting on the human genome.

Postscript:
I should say that this only shows that we have been evolving over recent millennia. Now, with the globalisation of the worlds population and healthcare that can actually preserve disadvantageous genes in the pool, things might be very different.

Mother of all living

In Genesis 3, after the fall, we read of Adam giving his wife a (new?) name:

'The man called his wife's name Eve, because she was the mother of all living.'
v 20

What does this mean? Well first let's try and take it literally. In this reading Eve is the mother of everything that has life. Genesis 1 (i.e. the nearby context)describes this life being in every moving creature of both land and sea. In fact even the serpent (ch 3v1) is described as being a part of the 'living'!

There are many mother earth myths that talk of living creatures being born of a woman but I don't believe that this is what Genesis is saying to us. I think that this is to be taken spiritually not literally. Like much of what we read in this chapter this title is in anticipation of Jesus Christ. God says to the serpent:

'I will put enmity between you and the woman,
and between your offspring and her offspring;
he shall bruise your head,
and you shall bruise his heel'
v 15

Now, this isn't talking about a literal battle between humans and snakes but rather a spiritual battle between the ways of good and the ways of evil. Eve's offspring wins, crushing the head of the serpent's. This is the victory of Christ that brings life to all.

'...that through death he might destroy the one who has the power of death, that is, the devil, and deliver all those who through fear of death were subject to lifelong slavery.'
Hebrews 2 v 14

That is how Eve is the mother of all living, because all who are alive are alive through Christ.

Information is everything

A paper has recently been published by Intelligent Design advocate William Dembski. I’ve tried to read it but it’s way over my head so instead I’ve opted for the ‘lite’ version i.e. an intelligent design blog!

‘Dembski and Marks' article explains that unless you start off with some information indicating where peaks in a fitness landscape may lie, any search — including a Darwinian one — is on average no better than a random search.’

That seems to be saying that you can’t build a Darwinian machine from scratch.

‘The implication, of course, is that some intelligent programmer is required to front-load a search with active information if the search is to successfully find rare functional genetic sequences.’

That sounds plausible to me – and I’m in no position to critique it! – but I think we need to qualify the conclusions. This is an argument against materialism and not evolution.

Evolution begins when you have information that can be copied accurately (but not totally accurately, there has to be some error creeping in) and when this information is in competition with other bits of information i.e. genomes.

This article seems to be suggesting that getting to that point requires the system to be ‘front-loaded’ i.e. set up beforehand. When you examine the elaborate copying mechanisms used by the cell to replicate its information then it is easy to visualize this.

But seeing that all cells have this equipment then there is little to stop evolution proceeding and as part of the process it does generate new genetic information.

So this paper may well raise serious issues for the materialist, but for the theist who recognizes evolution it is simply confirmation of what we already knew! There is a creator at work in the natural world who guides all things to fulfill His purpose.