“It’s déjà vu all over again.”

As the story goes, baseball player and manager Yogi Berra first uttered this famous yogi-ism sitting in the dugout watching Mickey Mantle and Roger Maris hit back-to-back home runs. Something that happened on more than one occasion.

Yogi Berra’s verbal blunders are legendary. But, perhaps none top the blunder made by biologist Tim Berra. Berra’s blunder didn’t have anything to do with what he said, but with what he wrote in his book Evolution and the Myth of Creationism, published in 1990.

Berra’s Blunder

Targeting a nontechnical audience, Berra presented a case for biological evolution and explained why he and so many scientists think evolution is a fact. As part of this project, he described the evidence for human evolution, highlighting the progressive features of the hominid fossil record. Berra argues,

“If the australopithecines, Homo habilis, and Homo erectus were alive today, and if we could parade them before the world, there could be no doubt about our relatedness to them. It would be like attending an auto show. If you look at a 1953 Corvette and compare it to the latest model, only the most general resemblances are evident, but if you compare a 1953 and a 1954 Corvette, side by side, then a 1954 and 1955 model, and so on, the descent with modification is overwhelmingly obvious. This is what paleontologists do with fossils, and the evidence is so solid and comprehensive that it cannot be denied by reasonable people.”¹

In comparing Corvette models with “transitional intermediates” in the fossil record, Berra made a significant error that has become known among creationists and ID proponents as Berra’s blunder. It almost goes without saying, Berra’s mistake was to use Corvettes—machines designed by automotive engineers—as an analogy for the hominid fossil record, claiming that sequential anatomical changes among the various hominid species reflect the outworking of an unguided evolutionary process in the same way that sequential design changes to Corvettes reflect the evolution of technology. But, as pointed out at that time by several creationists and intelligent design proponents, the Corvette sequence actually tells us something about how intelligent agents sometimes create: namely, designers can attain their goals by progressively modifying existing designs. To put it another way, the chronological appearance of organisms in the fossil record displaying serial changes to their anatomical, physiological, and behavioral features could be explained as the work of a Creator who was successively producing creatures that displayed modifications of an archetypical design. In this sense, the fossil record doesn’t necessarily compel reasonable people to accept biological evolution any more than does the evolution of the American automobile.

The sequential changes seen in the fossil record just as reasonably reflect the work of a mind as mechanism.

 Déjà Vu Once More

Recently, researchers from UCLA made the same blunder as Tim Berra—all over again!² These investigators wanted to understand the principles that influence the tempo and mode for technology development in a society. As a case study, these investigators examined the appearance and disappearance of American car and truck models manufactured between 1896 (when automobiles were first produced) and 2014, using the same approach that paleontologists might use to study the fossil record. Specifically, they monitored the year-by-year diversity of automobile models, paying special attention to the number of new models that were produced (analogous to speciation) each year and the number of discontinued models (analogous to extinction).

These researchers also explored the factors influencing the diversity of automobile models each year. Particularly, they assessed the effects of competition, and the impact of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and oil prices.

Their analysis indicates that the “origination” and “extinction” rates of automobile models displayed highly similar patterns over the course of the last 118 years. In both cases, origination and extinction rates were highest early in the automobile’s history, gradually declining to lower rates over time. The rates of decline dramatically slowed in the 1960s when the Big Three auto manufacturers rose to dominance in the American market place. Since the 1980s, the rate of automobile model extinction has outpaced the appearance rate of new models. However, during this time frame, the lifespan of automobile models has significantly increased.

The UCLA researchers also discovered that completion has had a much greater influence on automobile diversity than GDP and oil prices.

Based on these results, the authors of this study argue that when a technology is in its early stages, manufacturers introduce more experimental designs into the marketplace. But because these designs are experimental, they also disappear more rapidly. They maintain that the appearance and disappearance rates slow as dominant designs emerge. When that happens, it becomes too costly to introduce experimental models into the marketplace. Eventually, cost becomes such a significant factor that it causes the life expectancy of designs to persist for longer time periods.

Based on this study, the UCLA scientists predict that in the near future the number of hybrid and electric car designs will rapidly diversify—a radiation event, of sorts—because these technologies are in their nascent stages.

The Fossil Record and the Case for Creation

The UCLA researchers demonstrated that some of the techniques paleontologists use to study the fossil record—and hence, the history of life on Earth—can yield important insights about the way cultures and technologies change and develop. However, as with Berra’s blunder, they treated designed objects as if they were fossils, which, according to the evolutionary paradigm, are produced by unguided, mechanistic processes. The approach the UCLA research team used to study technology development, once again, highlights the fact that the sequential changes seen in the fossil record just as reasonably reflect the work of a mind as mechanism.

But, it is possible to take the implications of their work one step further. Not only can we argue that the progressive anatomical changes observed in fossilized organisms reflect the Creator’s handiwork, but so do overall patterns in the fossil record. The UCLA study demonstrates that when it comes to technology produced by human designers, the number of design variants and the rate that designs appear and disappear from the marketplace have a rational basis. Though the rationale may be different than what the UCLA researchers discovered for the automobile’s evolution, it becomes all the more reasonable to view changes in biological diversity and origination and extinction rates in the fossil record as reflecting a Creator’s intentional activity.

In other words, the evidence (the fossil record and homology) that biologists insist provides compelling support for the evolutionary paradigm actually finds ready explanation from a creation model perspective.

Resources

“Archetype or Ancestor? Sir Richard Owen and the Case for Design” by Fazale Rana (Article)

"What About Transitional Forms" by Fazale Rana (Video)

"Homology" by Fazale Rana (Video)

Endnotes

1. Tim Berra, Evolution and the Myth of Creationism (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1990), 117.
2. Erik Gjesfjeld et al., “Competition and Extinction Explain the Evolution of Diversity in American Automobiles,” Palgrave Communications 2 (May 2016): 16019, doi:10.1057/palcomms.2016.19.

 

Subjects: Creation vs. Evolution, Fossil Record, Transitional Forms

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