It is hard to discuss the problems with the theory of evolution because there are so many theories of evolution. All of them have major problems. Let's look at them.

Lamarkian Inheritance

Modern theories of evolution begin with the 18^th century French evolutionist Jean-Baptiste Antoine de Monet, Chevalier de Lamark. In the 1790's he popularized the idea of "the development or atrophy of organs through 'use or disuse' and their transmission to offspring who inherit these 'acquired characteristics'". His ideas weren't universally accepted because he could not really explain how or why these characteristics were passed on. He had a vague notion that they were passed on because the critter "must" pass them on.

We discussed this replacement of logic with wishful thinking in The Santa Similarity. In that essay we said that when a child sees Christmas presents under the tree, the child believes that Santa must have been there, which proves the existence of Santa Claus. In the same way, Lamark saw different sized trees, which he took as evidence that the taller trees must have evolved from shorter trees, which was his proof of evolution.

Since the French word Lamark used for "must" (besoin) was translated as "wants to" in the English translations of his work, English-speaking critics made fun of his idea that Giant Sequoia trees produced seeds for taller trees because the trees wanted to have taller offspring. This criticism wasn't entirely fair. Lamark didn't believe plants had conscious will. But the criticism stuck because Lamark made no attempt to explain the evolutionary mechanism. This left his theory of evolution too close to the realm of magic and miracles for scientists to accept it.

Darwinism

Darwin revived the theory of evolution by doing what Lamark could not do. He supplied a plausible mechanism for descent with modification. He correctly observed: (1) there is a certain amount of variation in offspring; (2) there are more offspring produced than can survive; (3) in the fight for survival, the best variants live and the worst variants die. He correctly concluded that this gradually causes small, but noticeable, changes in species.

Darwin then extrapolated this truth into non-truth. He believed that these gradual changes could continue without limit, resulting in changes so large that entirely new species would evolve. He believed that when more fossils were found, the fossil record would show evidence of these gradual changes. But after more than 130 years of searching, those fossils have not been found.

Pangenesis

Both Lamark and Darwin believed in pangenesis.

According to pangenesis, a trait acquired by a parent during his or her lifetime could be passed on to children (Lamarkian or "soft" inheritance). If a man worked to develop large muscles, for instance, the repeated habit of weight-lifting would somehow leave a lasting record in the cells of his body. Particles carrying this information were called "gemmules." They would migrate from all parts of the body to the sex cells, whereby they could be inherited by the offspring.

We now know that acquired characteristics can't be inherited. If you look at really old issues of National Geographic, you will see pictures of African women who from early childhood had placed increasingly large wooden crescents between their teeth and their lips, causing their lips to stick out several inches by they time the were adults, making them very beautiful (at least, in the eyes of the African men of that era). Their daughters, however, were never born with these big, beautiful lips. Every generation of girls painfully had to acquire large lips themselves.

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