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When doing battle with the White Witch, Edmund gets a kudos from Lewis for being wise enough to attack the witch's wand rather than herself directly. Sanford does something similar here. Most creationists focus on how bad the odds of evolution happening are, and these arguments have already fatally wounded evolutionary theory in times past (e.g. Behe). To be sure, Sanford covers some of the same terrain here, but he spends more time than anyone else thoroughly interrogating "selection" as a force and explaining what it can and cannot feasibly accomplish. The answer, it turns out, is precious little, not even enough to keep genome from actively degenerating.
I found him giving words to problems I had sensed (if not clearly defined) while studying genetics during my undergrad years. For example, he points out there is a severe disjunct between what selection needs to accomplish (fine-tuning miniscule, "near neutral" mutations with little impact on the genome (or organism) overall) and the tools it has to do it (saying "yes" or "no" to the entire genome (or organism)). Most "near neutral" mutations simply don't have enough overall impact to even be seen by selective processes. To compound that problem, differential survival and reproduction is driven much more by random chance ("noise") than by genomic changes overall. When you add the fact that the genome is accumulating bad mutations at a steady rate, you realize that time makes the problem worse, not better. And if you like that argument, read the book, as there's more where that came from.
To address a potential "authority-bluster" counter-argument, even I was initially wondering if this book could really contain any revolutionary arguments since it hasn't made much of a splash. However, I realized the silence shouldn't have surprised me. At this point in history, evolutionary theory has philosophically retreated into it's frozen, academic fortress. Furthermore, secular materialism (the dominant philosophy animating evolutionary theory) is giving it a constant stream of supplies, such that, evolutionary thinking will likely only topple when it does. Either that, or the secularists might come up with a better theory, more worthy of their support. In this kind of climate, it's no wonder that Sanford essentially ended up preaching to the choir, even if he (and I) wish he could do more. To conclude, this really is a stellar book, with some genuinely top-rate, original thinking. I highly recommend it.
I found him giving words to problems I had sensed (if not clearly defined) while studying genetics during my undergrad years. For example, he points out there is a severe disjunct between what selection needs to accomplish (fine-tuning miniscule, "near neutral" mutations with little impact on the genome (or organism) overall) and the tools it has to do it (saying "yes" or "no" to the entire genome (or organism)). Most "near neutral" mutations simply don't have enough overall impact to even be seen by selective processes. To compound that problem, differential survival and reproduction is driven much more by random chance ("noise") than by genomic changes overall. When you add the fact that the genome is accumulating bad mutations at a steady rate, you realize that time makes the problem worse, not better. And if you like that argument, read the book, as there's more where that came from.
To address a potential "authority-bluster" counter-argument, even I was initially wondering if this book could really contain any revolutionary arguments since it hasn't made much of a splash. However, I realized the silence shouldn't have surprised me. At this point in history, evolutionary theory has philosophically retreated into it's frozen, academic fortress. Furthermore, secular materialism (the dominant philosophy animating evolutionary theory) is giving it a constant stream of supplies, such that, evolutionary thinking will likely only topple when it does. Either that, or the secularists might come up with a better theory, more worthy of their support. In this kind of climate, it's no wonder that Sanford essentially ended up preaching to the choir, even if he (and I) wish he could do more. To conclude, this really is a stellar book, with some genuinely top-rate, original thinking. I highly recommend it.
