Richard Dawkins’ Progressive Irrelevancy

Richard Dawkins’ Progressive Irrelevancy

Eryn Brown, writing for the Los Angeles Times, published an article last week entitled “Richard Dawkins discusses evolution, religion and his fans” based on an interview over coffee at the chic Mondrian Hotel on the Sunset Boulevard in West Los Angeles.

To the question “what scientific work are you particularly interested in today,” Dawkins replied, “I’m fascinated by the idea that genetics is digital. A gene is a long sequence of coded letters, like computer information. Modern biology is becoming very much a branch of information technology.”  

“Can having all that data change the study of molecular biology and evolution” Brown then asked. “It’s hugely more data to work from,” Dawkins said. “You really can compare letter by letter. The complete tree of life should be gettable, if only we could sequence everything, and that’s limited only by money and time”−a purely deceptive distortion of the facts.

Money and time for genetic research is certainly far cry from “limited.” One of the first US government sponsored genetic research grants was approved in 1986 for $16 million. A budget of $3 billion was formally funded to the National Institute of Health in 1990. The first ‘rough draft’ was finished in just ten years later in 2000, with the Human Genome Project (HGP) declared complete in April 2003.

Science policy analyst, Jonathan Max Gitlin, estimates federal spending between 1988 and 2010 for the HGP has generated an economic impact of $796 billion. In 2010 alone, government directed genomic funding supported more than 50,000 jobs, and indirectly supported more than 310,000 jobs.

Aside from government funding, venture capitalists, hedge funds and investment banks have invested heavily in the genomics industry. Craig Venter’s Celera Genomics firm alone invested $300 million to compete against federally funded efforts to sequence the human genome. Today, more than 25 companies nationwide provide complete genome sequencing services–human and animal.  

Dawkins answer to Brown is blatant deception: complete genomes have been intensely investigated for more than a decade with funded by historic levels of public and private financial and time investments.  The progressive irrelevancy stems undoubtedly from Dawkins fear of the overwhelming scientific evidence stacked against Darwin’s theory.

As Eugene V. Koonin, Senior Investigator at the National Center for Biotechnology Information succinctly explains, the “genomic revolution… [has] effectively overturned the central metaphor of evolutionary biology, the Tree of Life… Our unfaltering admiration for Darwin notwithstanding, we must relegate the Victorian worldview to the venerable museum halls where it belongs, and explore the consequences of the paradigm shift.”

Advances in genetics over the past decade have decimated Darwin’s central tenet−life evolving into a “tree of life.” Like the fossil record, stasis is a dominates feature of genetics, too−not the genomic changes as expected by Dawkins beloved Modern Synthesis theory of evolution.

In his book entitled The Logic of Chance, the Nature and Origin of Biological Evolution (2011), Koonin draws a parallel between the fossil record and genomics -

"The history of the great majority of animal species, as reflected in the fossil record, represents mostly stasis−that is the virtual lack of change."

In the same way, “the key finding of comparative genomics is that the majority of the genes in any genome can be considered ‘highly conserved’.” Rather than discovering “slight, successive” genomic changes, the evidence points to conservation−not evolution.

From the range of genome animals studied, “the unique identity of genes tends to persist… [with] a substantial majority of the genes in each genome are highly conserved… genes are characterized by extreme longevity, and many might be immortal,” Koonin argues.

“Striking examples come out of the recent genome sequencing of primitive animals,” Koonin continues, “the gene repertories of sea anemone, Trichloplax, and sponge show extensive conservation with mammals and birds”−not evolution.

Brown’s interview highlights the progressive irrelevancy of the evolution industry in general−Dawkins in particular. Scientific evidence from the genome is powerfully undermining Darwinism, neo-Darwinism, and the Modern Synthesis theory of evolution.

Evolution exists only as a philosophical fact, not as a scientific fact.

Biological evolution was once a theory in crisis, now evolution is in crisis without even a comprehensive theory.