I’m reading a book called “Evolution 2.0” by Perry Marshall, where he makes the case (all based on current scientific knowledge) that organisms down to the cell level ACTIVELY change and mutate on their own in response to changes/threats from the environment, driven by their innate desire/need to survive and thrive.
Cells even intentionally reprogram their own DNA in order to survive.
The idea that random, undirected tiny mutations is the main driver of evolution is totally debunked, as is the idea that life began as a chemical soup.
I highly recommend it. Just discovering the incredible complexity of a cell is mind blowing.
I have that book, and it is loaded with naïve statements like these:
"The [whale] genome didn't just delete lines of code and make the legs disappear entirely. It looked as though the adaptive program was trying to hang on to valuable inventory. It seemed almost... conservative. As though it knew it might need those legs some time in the future, and so resisted deleting them. Who knows? Maybe those bones still serve some unseen function now." [Chap.2]
"I read hundreds of conversations with people of all stripes, about things like whale feet and blind mole rats and pseudogenes and a hundred other things. Then, eventually, the remarkable discoveries of Barbara McClintock and Lynn Margulis. The evidence they offered slowly persuaded me that the case for some kind of evolution was credible." [Chap.22]
"Dawkins' software program was programmed to compare each new sentence to the goal sentence and either select it for continued 'mutation' or reject it based on whether it more closely resembled the goal than the previous mutation. But his very own '1.0' Darwinian evolution explicitly forbids preprogrammed goals! So Dawkins' 'Weasel' experiment had nothing to do with true Neo-Darwinism. His program does vaguely resemble what cells do. But don't forget— Dawkins has always insisted that evolution is blind and purposeless. His program is anything but blind and purposeless; its goal is precisely defined from the beginning! What Dawkins actually proved with this experiment was: If you want to evolve, you have to start with a goal." [Chap.25]
"The Neo-Darwinists deny purpose, even though their language drips with purpose-laden terms like 'selfish genes.' They criticize Young Earth Creationists for insisting the Earth only appears to be millions of years old... yet they claim that living things only appear to be purposeful. What's the difference? When you allow nature to simply tell its own story, when you subtract randomness from the equation and replace it with the goal-seeking systems, evolution, in the form of Evolution 2.0, finally begins to make sense. You find that real-world biology doesn't support atheism at all. It speaks to a world that's even more amazing than most people dared to believe." [Chap.27]
"I said to Jeff, 'I appreciate what you're saying, and in theory that might be true. But if the universe was created 6,000 years ago, yet has the appearance of having an exquisitely detailed 13-billion-year history, that drags us into all kinds of freakish philosophical problems.' Paul nodded. He knew exactly what I meant. Some folks are untroubled by such questions, but people in the sciences are never content to shrug off such things. I admired Paul for his candor about his Young Earth Creationism. After all, he was right: It is not scientifically defensible. It runs into trouble with the speed of light and radiometric dating, plus astronomy, geology, archaeology, and a half dozen other disciplines." [Appendix 2]
[From: Perry A. Marshall, "Evolution 2.0: Breaking the Deadlock Between Darwin and Design." BenBella Books, Inc., 2015]
Frankly, Marshall seems confused about everything: evolution, intelligent design, creationism, . . . everything! But it doesn't seem to bother him. He is perfectly happy sitting on any number of fences.
One of the books he attempts to marginalize, "Darwin's Doubt" by Stephen Meyer, is one of the most scientifically-sound books I have read, and I highly recommend it.
Mr. Kalamata