I think a few words on “Evolution” are in order. First, the parentheses: they are there because few dispute that change over time happens. There is no reason not to assume some sort of familial relation at some point in the distant past between Homo Sapiens and, say, the Neanderthals. Just look at a chart of dog breeds and will readily understand that selection, per se, has long been practiced and understood the world over.
What is at issue is the hypothesis that life came into being through Natural Selections, Darwin’s actual big idea, and that the diversity of form plainly evident on Earth was likewise the result of what might be termed “Change plus retention”.
We hear the argument about the monkeys and Shakespeare. This is not a good argument, because what the Natural Selectionists will argue is that once a monkey types To Be, that phrase is retained. When they type “or not to be”, that, too is retained. Given enough time, this retentive/memory mechanism will not only produce Shakespeare, but be CERTAIN to produce Shakespeare.
In the wild, this amounts to what a later theorist called “survival of the fittest”, where fitness is always context dependent. Woolly Mammoths did great in the cold, not so much when things warmed up (at least as I understand it).
Intelligence, on this analysis, is a positive adaptation, one with clear survival value, hence me typing letters on a globally networked electronic tool.
The problem they have, and it is in my view an insoluble one within their paradigm, meaning necessarily that some necessary component is missing, is that of complexity. Darwin himself saw and understood the problem that a system like the eye creates.
The eye operates as a finely tuned machine, but one which only has ANY value when the parts are taken in aggregate. The same can be said of the cell itself, the basic unit of life. The same can be said for MANY biological systems.
Necessarily, Natural Selection is linear. The example given is of a countless series of digits on a large lock. The first digit is 7. After you try the other 9 digits, you hit it, and the change is retained. Then you go to lock number 2. That number is 3. You get it, then go to lock 3, which is a 2 also, etc.
Aesthetically, this is a very pleasing conception for some. It conveys an “intelligence”–an order–to Nature, without the need to posit anything like a God.
Yet, if we look at the actual fossil record, and life as it exists today, what has happened both in the past and now is that digits are getting dialed in simultaneously, such that 72257 suddenly appears, without warning. The piece is of a whole, with no antecedants. That is all that an eye or a cell is: an unexplainable statistical aberration whose regular occurence cannot be explained with a linear model.
In my view, field theories of life will need to be reincorporated into the so-called “life sciences” in order to resolve this conundrum. In my own view, “evolution” plainly happened, but that there is sticky property to the universe such that information, once developed, is maintained in a sort of record depository in the sky.
One book that I thought dealt well with this topic was “Science and the Akashic Record”. I cannot support the authors politics, but this book was in my view useful, even though I did not share all his conclusions. I have read many books on the topic. That one comes to mind first. Michael Behe, of course, is perhaps the best known. I have not read his books, since I already accept his premise, and have seen no intelligent counterarguments. As with all important topics–at least to me–I have done this debate many times in many places, and am confident in my views.
Rick Perry, in short, is on solid ground noting gaps in the Darwinian account of the genesis of life. Personally, I would support the right of Texans to teach Creationism as an alternative viewpoint, after discussing the Darwinian view, but what I most want to see is, first, the scientific gaps noted; and longer term what is really needed is actual SCIENTISTS chasing what I believe will be a culture altering paradigmatic shift, one that will attened actually figuring out how life works.