Richard Dawkins and Evolutionary Trees of Life

Spend some time with atom-to-atheist evolution material, and you will invariably encounter drawings or other renderings of trees of life. Charles Darwin had an "I think" tree of life where all living things can be traced to a universal common ancestor.

It makes sense that modifications in the tree of life concept would be made as evolutionary concepts evolved. However, there are many of them because there is little agreement; they do not work. Clinton Richard Dawkins tried his hand at making predictions with them.

Burning down Darwin's tree of life, unmodified version is at Wikimedia Commons

Dr. Dawkins made predictions based on two common ToL versions. One tree is based on the science of genetics that was pioneered by creationist Gregor Mendel (peas be upon him). Another uses physical characteristics. The trees do not coincide very well. Dawkins made a prediction for both design and for evolution. Since there's a huge amount of genetic data now available, his predictions were given scrutiny. It did not go well. If he was interested in the Creator he denies, he could learn about the real Tree of Life.

Evolutionary biologist and aggressive advocate for atheism Richard Dawkins has made an argument claiming that an intelligent designer could not have been responsible for life. He predicted that, if Darwinian evolution is true, most every gene in a selection of a large group of organisms would produce “approximately the same tree of life” that is produced by physiology and external morphology. If Intelligent Design were correct, Dawkins continued predicting, the designer would have “picked and chosen” the “best proteins for the specific task required” in each organism. As a result, he claimed, genes would often not produce close to the exact same tree as morphology would.

Evolutionists have put this idea to the test, and found that evolutionary trees based on physiology or external morphology differ from each other, sometimes drastically. The best example is the tree produced by attempts to illustrate human evolution. The charts below show that even producing a phylogenetic tree for humans is difficult.

To continue reading and see how Dawkins was falsified, head on over to "Evolutionary Trees Tangle With the Data." Also of interest is "Confusion on the Tree of Life."