The Case for a Creator (6 page)

An inveterate iconoclast, Wells doesn’t shy away from controversy. After a two-year stint in the Army, he became an antiwar activist at Berkeley and ended up doing jail time for refusing to go to Vietnam as a reservist. While later living a Thoreau-like existence in a remote California cabin, he became enthralled by the grandeur of creation and gained new confidence that God was behind it. His spiritual interest rejuvenated, Wells explored numerous religious alternatives, visiting gurus, preachers, and swamis.
⁷

I hadn’t come to Seattle, however, to seek spiritual wisdom from Wells. Instead, I sought him out because of his scientific expertise—and because he authored a book whose title intrigued me the moment I first saw it.

Icons of Evolution
, which was published in 2000, takes a clear-headed, scientific look at the very same visual images that had convinced me of the truth of Darwinian evolution. The Miller experiment, Darwin’s tree of life, Haeckel’s embryos, the
archaeopteryx
missing link—they were all there, along with several other symbols of evolution. The book’s subtitle especially piqued my curiosity:
Why Much of What We Teach about Evolution Is Wrong
.
⁸

Here was my chance to put these images—and the broader question of Darwinism’s overall reliability—to the test. I eased into a comfortable chair that squarely faced the bearded and bespectacled Wells, who was sitting behind a wooden desk. He was casually dressed in a striped, short-sleeve shirt. While soft-spoken and mild-mannered as we chatted informally before our interview, he would quickly become animated as we began delving into his hot-button topic of evolutionary theory.

I flipped through my yellow legal pad to find a fresh page and took a pen in hand. More than thirty-five years after these icons of evolution led me on a journey into naturalism and atheism, I was anxious to get the real story.
⁹

INVESTIGATING THE ICONS

Starting at the beginning, I briefly recounted for Wells how the four images of evolution had influenced my slide into atheism. In a subtle expression of empathy, he would nod almost imperceptibly as I talked, as if to reassure me that he understood what I had gone through. At the conclusion of my story, I gestured toward a copy of his book that was on the desk.

“You included all four of those symbols in your book, along with several others,” I said, “and you called them ‘icons of evolution.’ Why did you use that term?”

Wells leaned forward, putting his elbows on the desk. “Because if you ask almost any scientist to describe the evidence for Darwinism, time after time they give these same examples,” he said. “They’re in our textbooks. They’re what we teach our students. For many scientists, they
are
the evidence for evolution.”

“What are the other icons?”

“In addition to the four that influenced you, there is the similarity of bone structures in a bat’s wing, a porpoise’s flipper, a horse’s leg, and a human hand. This is touted as evidence of their origin in a common ancestor. Then there are the pictures in textbooks of peppered moths on tree trunks, showing how camouflage and predatory birds result in natural selection. Of course, there are Darwin’s finches—the Galapagos Island birds that are also used to support natural selection. Probably the most famous icon, though, is the drawing we see parodied in so many cartoons—the march of ape-like creatures as they slowly evolve into human beings, which suggests that we’re merely animals that evolved by purposeless natural causes.”

I paused for a moment while I took some notes. “Before we go any further,” I said, “let’s get our definitions straight. When some people say ‘evolution,’ they mean merely that there has been change over time. But that’s not an accurate description, is it?”

“Absolutely not,” Wells replied. “If that’s all there was to Darwinism, then there wouldn’t be any controversy, because we all agree there has been biological change over time. Others define evolution as just being ‘descent with modification.’ But again, everyone agrees that all organisms within a single species are related through descent with modification. This occurs in the ordinary course of biological reproduction.

“Darwinism claims much more than that—it’s the theory that
all
living creatures are modified descendents of a common ancestor that lived long ago. You and I, for example, are descendants of ape-like ancestors—in fact, we share a common ancestor with fruit flies. Darwinism claims that every new species that has ever appeared can be explained by descent with modification. Neo-Darwinism claims these modifications are the result of natural selection acting on random genetic mutations.”
¹⁰

“If these icons are the illustrations most cited as evidence of evolution, then I can see why they’re important,” I said. “What did you find as you examined them one by one?”

Wells didn’t hesitate. “That they’re either false or misleading,” he replied.

“False or misleading?” I echoed. “Wait a second—are you saying my science teacher was lying to me? That’s a pretty outrageous charge!”

Wells shook his head. “No, I’m not saying that. He probably believed in the icons too. I’m sure he wasn’t even aware of the way they misrepresent the evidence. But the end result is the same—much of what science teachers have been telling students is simply wrong. A lot of what you personally were told about the icons, for instance, is probably false.”

I considered the implications for a moment. “Okay, let me follow your logic,” I said. “If these icons are cited by scientists so often because they’re among the best evidence for Darwinism—”

“—And if they’re either false or misleading,” he said, picking up my thought, “then what does that tell us about evolutionary theory? That’s the point. The question I’m raising is whether all of this is really science—or is it actually a kind of mythology?”

That’s the very question I wanted to pursue. I decided that my approach would be to ask Wells for the straight story on each of the icons that especially influenced me. I started with the one that had the biggest impact: the picture of the tubes, flasks, and electrodes of Stanley Miller’s 1953 experiment in which he shot electricity through an atmosphere like the one on the primitive earth, creating amino acids—the building blocks of life.

The clear implication—that life could be created naturalistically, without the intervention of a Creator—had been largely responsible for untethering me from my need for God.

IMAGE #1: THE MILLER EXPERIMENT

Obviously, the significance of Miller’s experiment—which to this day is still featured in many biology textbooks—hinges on whether he used an atmosphere that accurately simulated the environment of the early earth. At the time, Miller was relying heavily on the atmospheric theories of his doctoral advisor, Nobel laureate Harold Urey.

“What’s the best scientific assessment today?” I asked Wells. “Did Miller use the correct atmosphere or not?”

Wells leaned back in his chair. “Well, nobody knows for sure what the early atmosphere was like, but the consensus is that the atmosphere was not at all like the one Miller used,” he began.

“Miller chose a hydrogen-rich mixture of methane, ammonia, and water vapor, which was consistent with what many scientists thought back then. But scientists don’t believe that anymore. As a geophysicist with the Carnegie Institution said in the 1960s, ‘What is the evidence for a primitive methane-ammonia atmosphere on earth? The answer is that there is
no
evidence for it, but much against it.’
¹¹

“By the mid-1970s, Belgian biochemist Marcel Florkin was declaring that the concept behind Miller’s theory of the early atmosphere ‘has been abandoned.’
¹²
Two of the leading origin-of-life researchers, Klaus Dose and Sidney Fox, confirmed that Miller had used the wrong gas mixture.
¹³
And
Science
magazine said in 1995 that experts now dismiss Miller’s experiment because ‘the early atmosphere looked nothing like the Miller-Urey simulation.’ ”
¹⁴

I asked, “What’s the current thinking of scientists concerning the gas content of the early earth?”

“The best hypothesis now is that there was very little hydrogen in the atmosphere because it would have escaped into space. Instead, the atmosphere probably consisted of carbon dioxide, nitrogen, and water vapor,” Wells said. “So my gripe is that textbooks still present the Miller experiment as though it reflected the earth’s early environment, when most geochemists since the 1960s would say it was totally unlike Miller’s.”

I asked the next logical question: “What happens if you replay the experiment using an accurate atmosphere?”

“I’ll tell you this: you do not get amino acids, that’s for sure,” he replied. “Some textbooks fudge by saying, well, even if you use a realistic atmosphere, you still get organic molecules, as if that solves the problem.”

Actually, that sounded promising. “
Organic
molecules?” I said. “I’m not a biochemist, but couldn’t those be precursors to life?”

Wells recoiled. “That’s what they sound like, but do you know what they are? Formaldehyde! Cyanide!” he declared, his voice rising for emphasis. “They may be organic molecules, but in my lab at Berkeley you couldn’t even have a capped bottle of formaldehyde in the room, because the stuff is so toxic. You open the bottle and it fries proteins all over the place, just from the fumes. It kills embryos. The idea that using a realistic atmosphere gets you the first step in the origin of life is just laughable.

“Now, it’s true that a good organic chemist can turn formaldehyde and cyanide into biological molecules. But to suggest that formaldehyde and cyanide give you the right substrate for the origin of life,” he said, breaking into a chuckle, “Well, it’s just a joke.”

He let the point sink in before delivering the clincher. “Do you know what you get?” he asked. “Embalming fluid!”

PUTTING HUMPTY-DUMPTY TOGETHER

The march of science has clearly left Miller’s experiment in the dust, even if some textbooks haven’t yet noticed. But I wanted to press on and test other scenarios.

“Let’s say that a scientist someday actually manages to produce amino acids from a realistic atmosphere of the early earth,” I began. I could see Wells was ready to interrupt, so I preempted him: “Look, I understand it’s not chemically possible, but let’s say it was. Or let’s say amino acids came to earth in a comet or some other way. My question is this: how far would that be from creating a living cell?”

“Oh,” he said as he pounced on the question, “
Very
far.
Incredibly
far. That would be the first step in an extremely complicated process. You would have to get the right number of the right kinds of amino acids to link up to create a protein molecule—and that would still be a long way from a living cell. Then you’d need dozens of protein molecules, again in the right sequence, to create a living cell. The odds against this are astonishing. The gap between nonliving chemicals and even the most primitive living organism is absolutely tremendous.”

I needed a visual picture to help me understand this. “Can you give me an illustration?” I asked.

“Let me describe it this way,” he said. “Put a sterile, balanced salt solution in a test tube. Then put in a single living cell and poke a hole in it so that its contents leak into the solution. Now the test tube has all the molecules you would need to create a living cell, right? You would already have accomplished far more than what the Miller experiment ever could—you’ve got all the components you need for life.”

I nodded. “That’s right.”

“The problem is you can’t make a living cell,” he said. “There’s not even any point in trying. It would be like a physicist doing an experiment to see if he can get a rock to fall upwards all the way to the moon. No biologist in his right mind would think you can take a test tube with those molecules and turn them into a living cell.”

“In other words,” I said, “if you want to create life, on top of the challenge of somehow generating the cellular components out of nonliving chemicals, you would have an even bigger problem in trying to put the ingredients together in the right way.”

“Exactly! In my illustration, the cell is dead, and you can’t put Humpty-Dumpty back together again. So even if you could accomplish the thousands of steps between the amino acids in the Miller tar—which probably didn’t exist in the real world anyway—and the components you need for a living cell—all the enzymes, the DNA, and so forth—you’re still immeasurably far from life.”

“But,” I protested, “the first cell was probably a lot more primitive than even the simplest single-cell organism today.”

“Granted,” he said. “But my point remains the same—the problem of assembling the right parts in the right way at the right time and at the right place, while keeping out the wrong material, is simply insurmountable. Frankly, the idea that we’re on the verge of explaining the origin of life naturalistically is just silly to me.”

“There’s no theory, then, that can account for how life could have naturally come together by itself without any direction or guidance?”

Wells stroked his salt-and-pepper beard. “The word ‘theory’ is very slippery,” he replied. “I can make up a story, but it would be unsupported at every crucial step by any experimental evidence worth counting. I’m an experimentalist at heart. I’d want to see some evidence—and it’s just not there.

“For instance, one popular theory was that RNA, a close relative of DNA, could have been a molecular cradle from which early cells developed. This ‘RNA world’ hypothesis was heralded as a great possibility for a while. But nobody could demonstrate how RNA could have formed before living cells were around to make it, or how it could have survived under the conditions on the early earth.