Darwin's Doubt: The Explosive Origin of Animal Life and the Case for Intelligent Design

by Stephen C. Meyer

Behe and Snoke found that if generating a new gene required multiple coordinated mutations, then the waiting time would grow exponentially with each additional necessary mutational change. They also assessed how population sizes affected how long it would take to generate new genes, if multiple coordinated mutations were necessary to produce those genes. They found, not surprisingly, that just as larger populations diminished expected waiting times, smaller populations dramatically increased them. More important, they found that even if building a new gene required just two coordinated mutations, the neo-Darwinian mechanism would likely either require huge population sizes or extremely long waiting times or both. If coordinated mutations were necessary, then evolution at the genetic level faced a catch-22: for the standard neo-Darwinian mechanism to generate just two coordinated mutations, it typically either needed unreasonably long waiting times, times that exceeded the duration of life on earth, or it needed unreasonably large population sizes, populations exceeding the number of multicellular organisms that have ever lived. To get population sizes that were reasonable, they had to have waiting times that were unreasonable. To get waiting times that were reasonable, they had to have population sizes that were unreasonable. As they put it, either way the “numbers seem prohibitive.”26 Behe and Snoke found that mutation and selection could generate two coordinated mutation...