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Not by Chance: Shattering the Modern Theory of Evolution
Physicist Dr. Lee M. Spetner's new book has biologists and geneticists across the country praising this book as one of the most serious challenges to the modern theory of evolution. "Dr. Spetner has an extraordinary ability to present complex mathematical, statistical, and biological issues in a comprehensible manner."--Rabbi Joseph Elias, The Jewish Observer "It is certainly the most rational attack on evolution that I have ever read"--Professor E. Simon, Department of Biology, Purdue University
262 pages, Paperback
First published June 1, 1997
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October 12, 2013
Spetner, PhD in physics and years of specialized study in organic evolution, takes the reader step by step, sometimes mini-step by mini-step, with the frequent reiteration necessary for the novice, convenient for the layman, but unnecessarily repetitious for the expert. Nonetheless, due to his nonconformist analyses, the result is an intriguing, informative text for anyone not already ideologically committed to the two chief rival dogmatic alternatives. His book addresses the neo-Darwinian theory (NDT) of “evolution by random variation.”
Ah, those physicists. They just can’t keep away from numbers. His chapters on “Information and Life,” “Is the Deck Stacked? Can the variation be random?,” and “Can Random Variation Build Information?” do not hold back on pertinent use of mathematical statistics and probability. At this point, someone not keen on math will appreciate that previously mentioned use of reminders and reiterations.
And ah, those experts in evolutionary biology, they just can’t keep away from technical descriptions of proteins, enzymes, and DNA. Not to worry, for Spetner provides appendices that take the reader more gradually through the processes of life. It seems to me that if the details he describes, each of which involve hundreds more specific biochemical interactions which he spares the reader, were to occur a step at a time, then the first living cell would still be struggling to get itself into a biochemically coherent, inheritable, living organism, and still have millions of years to go. But perhaps the first living cell was simpler, as they say. Perhaps it had no vacuoles. Perhaps it had no nucleolus. Perhaps it had no cytoplasm. Perhaps it was filled with spring water. The simplest living cell is one of the least simple things a person could ever imagine, as Spetner makes abundantly clear; and I am convinced that the most creative human imagination could never have imagined such complexity without first seeing something like it.
Perhaps taking a clue from Darwin himself, or discovering later that Darwin agreed with him, Spetner quotes the 19th century “natural scientist”:
“I have hitherto sometimes spoken as if the variations . . . were due to chance. This, of course, is a wholly incorrect expression, but it serves to acknowledge plainly our ignorance of the cause of each particular variation. . . . variability is generally related to the conditions of life to which each species has been exposed during several successive generations.”
Spetner set out to identify those causes. He shows that “variations cannot lead to the large-scale evolution claimed by the neo-Darwinians,” that there is more than enough evidence to support nonrandom, i.e., specific, variation that could produce the large-scale evolution that neo-Darwinians are looking for. Spetner calls his view the nonrandom evolutionary hypothesis (NREH).
Now and then, ironic humor pops up, such as one of the options left open to the neo-Darwinians in the face of the evidence for nonrandom variation: “The first option would be just to reject the scientific view as incorrect, simply because it arrives at the wrong conclusion.” Speaking from experience, I can say that there are many who do just that! He continues perceptively, “Although this option may seem low-brow, it is robust and has proved its value in the past.” Indeed. And therefore, why let facts and reason stand in the way of pseudo-science dogma (“random” variation).
There is a mathematical limit to what blind luck can accomplish. Spetner contends that a major weakness with some random-variation evolutionists is that they do not do any calculations to back up their claims.. Spetner gives the example of R. Dawkins’ famous but inept “missionary treatise:” “The Blind Watchmaker.” “Dawkins talked about chance, but he didn’t calculate the chance of anything. Nor did he cite anyone who did. Although he mentioned the Cairn-Smith theory and the old myth of life originating in some indecipherable primeval soup, Dawkins just assumed that cumulative selection could lead to mAcroevolution. After spending considerable effort to explain random variation, mutation rates, new vs. lost biological “information and specificity,” permease enzymes, repressor proteins, and more (biological life being neither a simple nor certain matter, but a highly complex and improbable one), Spetner attempts to demonstrate that Dawkins did not understand what ‘probability’ is. “If a theory predicts that chance to be one in a million or less, then the theory does not account for the origin of life.” A stronger theory might predict parameters under which the chance for life to be one in a thousand, or one in a hundred, or one in one. One in a million, though, is “just guessing.” Very unscientific.
Spetner is not picking on Dawkins. He refers to many biologists, particularly evolutionary biologists, in order to explain neo-Darwinian theory and apologetics and to offer his counter-proposal. He describes concrete examples of evolution, though not randomly; he describes the specific biochemical issues involved in mutations and in the examples of evolution he addresses. He fairly points out neo-Darwinists’ strong points, as well as the weaknesses of their theoretical explanations and conclusions as based on their own experiments. Of course he cites scientists who have also found NDT to be unconvincing, citing, e.g., Fred Hoyle and Chandra Wickramasinghe’s “Why Neo-Darwinism Does Not Work,” which in a mere 34 pages presents a mathematical disproof of Neo-Darwinian theory.
Much more could and proably should be said, about the author’s observations and arguments. The technical material was simplified to make it more accessible to the general public, though that very process of simplification makes some arguments easy targets for criticism. The details behind the simplifications are available in the supporting 18-page references, if someone really wants to give the book a fair hearing. A fair criticism must take into account the details from those references, on which Spetner bases some of his reasoning and conclusions.
I’m not the only one who sometimes neglects to check who the publisher before beginning to read a book. The publisher is clearly named: The Judaica Press. Since I was half-expecting some amount of Christian apologetic, however subdued it might be, page 211 snuck up on me with its unexpected reference to “Jewish tradition and the Torah view.” The only reason that seemed even slightly out of place, was because Spetner’s arguments satisfy, through agreement or through strength of counter-argument, any philosophical orientation a reader could have, from atheist to Christian to Future-think.
Ah, those physicists. They just can’t keep away from numbers. His chapters on “Information and Life,” “Is the Deck Stacked? Can the variation be random?,” and “Can Random Variation Build Information?” do not hold back on pertinent use of mathematical statistics and probability. At this point, someone not keen on math will appreciate that previously mentioned use of reminders and reiterations.
And ah, those experts in evolutionary biology, they just can’t keep away from technical descriptions of proteins, enzymes, and DNA. Not to worry, for Spetner provides appendices that take the reader more gradually through the processes of life. It seems to me that if the details he describes, each of which involve hundreds more specific biochemical interactions which he spares the reader, were to occur a step at a time, then the first living cell would still be struggling to get itself into a biochemically coherent, inheritable, living organism, and still have millions of years to go. But perhaps the first living cell was simpler, as they say. Perhaps it had no vacuoles. Perhaps it had no nucleolus. Perhaps it had no cytoplasm. Perhaps it was filled with spring water. The simplest living cell is one of the least simple things a person could ever imagine, as Spetner makes abundantly clear; and I am convinced that the most creative human imagination could never have imagined such complexity without first seeing something like it.
Perhaps taking a clue from Darwin himself, or discovering later that Darwin agreed with him, Spetner quotes the 19th century “natural scientist”:
“I have hitherto sometimes spoken as if the variations . . . were due to chance. This, of course, is a wholly incorrect expression, but it serves to acknowledge plainly our ignorance of the cause of each particular variation. . . . variability is generally related to the conditions of life to which each species has been exposed during several successive generations.”
Spetner set out to identify those causes. He shows that “variations cannot lead to the large-scale evolution claimed by the neo-Darwinians,” that there is more than enough evidence to support nonrandom, i.e., specific, variation that could produce the large-scale evolution that neo-Darwinians are looking for. Spetner calls his view the nonrandom evolutionary hypothesis (NREH).
Now and then, ironic humor pops up, such as one of the options left open to the neo-Darwinians in the face of the evidence for nonrandom variation: “The first option would be just to reject the scientific view as incorrect, simply because it arrives at the wrong conclusion.” Speaking from experience, I can say that there are many who do just that! He continues perceptively, “Although this option may seem low-brow, it is robust and has proved its value in the past.” Indeed. And therefore, why let facts and reason stand in the way of pseudo-science dogma (“random” variation).
There is a mathematical limit to what blind luck can accomplish. Spetner contends that a major weakness with some random-variation evolutionists is that they do not do any calculations to back up their claims.. Spetner gives the example of R. Dawkins’ famous but inept “missionary treatise:” “The Blind Watchmaker.” “Dawkins talked about chance, but he didn’t calculate the chance of anything. Nor did he cite anyone who did. Although he mentioned the Cairn-Smith theory and the old myth of life originating in some indecipherable primeval soup, Dawkins just assumed that cumulative selection could lead to mAcroevolution. After spending considerable effort to explain random variation, mutation rates, new vs. lost biological “information and specificity,” permease enzymes, repressor proteins, and more (biological life being neither a simple nor certain matter, but a highly complex and improbable one), Spetner attempts to demonstrate that Dawkins did not understand what ‘probability’ is. “If a theory predicts that chance to be one in a million or less, then the theory does not account for the origin of life.” A stronger theory might predict parameters under which the chance for life to be one in a thousand, or one in a hundred, or one in one. One in a million, though, is “just guessing.” Very unscientific.
Spetner is not picking on Dawkins. He refers to many biologists, particularly evolutionary biologists, in order to explain neo-Darwinian theory and apologetics and to offer his counter-proposal. He describes concrete examples of evolution, though not randomly; he describes the specific biochemical issues involved in mutations and in the examples of evolution he addresses. He fairly points out neo-Darwinists’ strong points, as well as the weaknesses of their theoretical explanations and conclusions as based on their own experiments. Of course he cites scientists who have also found NDT to be unconvincing, citing, e.g., Fred Hoyle and Chandra Wickramasinghe’s “Why Neo-Darwinism Does Not Work,” which in a mere 34 pages presents a mathematical disproof of Neo-Darwinian theory.
Much more could and proably should be said, about the author’s observations and arguments. The technical material was simplified to make it more accessible to the general public, though that very process of simplification makes some arguments easy targets for criticism. The details behind the simplifications are available in the supporting 18-page references, if someone really wants to give the book a fair hearing. A fair criticism must take into account the details from those references, on which Spetner bases some of his reasoning and conclusions.
I’m not the only one who sometimes neglects to check who the publisher before beginning to read a book. The publisher is clearly named: The Judaica Press. Since I was half-expecting some amount of Christian apologetic, however subdued it might be, page 211 snuck up on me with its unexpected reference to “Jewish tradition and the Torah view.” The only reason that seemed even slightly out of place, was because Spetner’s arguments satisfy, through agreement or through strength of counter-argument, any philosophical orientation a reader could have, from atheist to Christian to Future-think.
June 22, 2012
I got this book because R' Eli Mansour quoted it in a shuir. Since it was essentially a
statistics book it was a little tough to get through and not the most fascinating thing in the
world, but I liked reading it. Like the title suggests it went on quite a bit about the
probable impossibility of one species' DNA mutating enough to become another
sustainable species. Also it touched on the project where they are trying (unsuccessfully)
to recreate the big bang. I learned that bacteria, which obviously reproduces more quickly
than anything else, has never mutated in such a way that it became a new type of bacteria.
They may evolve to resist types of antibiotics or cause more severe effects, but
salmonella is always salmonella. I also learned more about different methods of dating
materials like rock, earth, trees, fossils, etc and how they don't always match up. So yeah,
boring, but informative to me. The author is not religious (that I know of), has all sorts of
MIT type education and really made the evolutionists look like idiots who overlook
evidence. They are no longer scientists, absorbing and theorizing based on all information
as they are a close minded anti religious party.
statistics book it was a little tough to get through and not the most fascinating thing in the
world, but I liked reading it. Like the title suggests it went on quite a bit about the
probable impossibility of one species' DNA mutating enough to become another
sustainable species. Also it touched on the project where they are trying (unsuccessfully)
to recreate the big bang. I learned that bacteria, which obviously reproduces more quickly
than anything else, has never mutated in such a way that it became a new type of bacteria.
They may evolve to resist types of antibiotics or cause more severe effects, but
salmonella is always salmonella. I also learned more about different methods of dating
materials like rock, earth, trees, fossils, etc and how they don't always match up. So yeah,
boring, but informative to me. The author is not religious (that I know of), has all sorts of
MIT type education and really made the evolutionists look like idiots who overlook
evidence. They are no longer scientists, absorbing and theorizing based on all information
as they are a close minded anti religious party.
October 9, 2012
Spetner and Behe seem to be common go-to arguments for the anti-evolution crowd. Interestingly, both men accept evolution. Each has a problem with specific aspects, mutation and complexity respectively. The 1990's is when I became aware of "macro" and "micro" evolution terms sometimes used by those willing to allow for adaptation but not wanting to acknowledge that enough change could lead to divergence. Divergence can lead to novel forms but is not a requirement for new species -thus spiders looking like spiders for millions of years and today including around 35,000 species. Books by these men either stemmed from or contributed to the misunderstanding. Not By Chance has been fairly well dismantled since publication. I would encourage anyone that reads this book to look at the counter arguments and also pick up biology books written by credible biologists.
July 25, 2016
It's not often I start a book and never finish it, but when I do, it's usually by someone too dishonest to accurately represent Biological Evolution, or ignorant and too lazy to properly learn the science. Hard to say which one Spetner is.
On page 73 he actually claims that "one step of evolution cannot, on average, bring to the genome more than one bit of information." Anyone who has done even a little reading on Shannon-Weaver information theory could tell you that even adding a single nucleotide is, by definition, 2 bits of information. That takes about 5 minutes to look up on Wikipedia for a layman, and this guy is making that sort of mistake despite having a PhD.
Hungry for more poor scholarship? Flip to chapter 4 for the whole basis of his critique. Basically, he thinks evolution is too unlikely because most mutations only make minor changes to survival advantage. He tries to make it look like that means that mutations are unlikely to change a whole population. If Spetner had bothered to take an intro population-dynamics course, he might have learned that many mutations are likely to be occurring at any given time, and that the chance of SOME advantageous mutation occurring and spreading is essentially assured. In fact, the common pattern is for phenotypes (reflective of genotype) in a population tend to form a bell-curve for a given trait, showing the genetic diversity spread around an optimum. Move the optimum and the bell curve will quickly shift. Evolution has no problem on this front.
There are many more examples of pure nonsense, but don't waste your time looking for them, even for a laugh. This book is a terrible attempt by a physicist to talk about a subject outside his area of expertise, but it is a great example of why one should not try to write books about subjects outside one's area of expertise.
On page 73 he actually claims that "one step of evolution cannot, on average, bring to the genome more than one bit of information." Anyone who has done even a little reading on Shannon-Weaver information theory could tell you that even adding a single nucleotide is, by definition, 2 bits of information. That takes about 5 minutes to look up on Wikipedia for a layman, and this guy is making that sort of mistake despite having a PhD.
Hungry for more poor scholarship? Flip to chapter 4 for the whole basis of his critique. Basically, he thinks evolution is too unlikely because most mutations only make minor changes to survival advantage. He tries to make it look like that means that mutations are unlikely to change a whole population. If Spetner had bothered to take an intro population-dynamics course, he might have learned that many mutations are likely to be occurring at any given time, and that the chance of SOME advantageous mutation occurring and spreading is essentially assured. In fact, the common pattern is for phenotypes (reflective of genotype) in a population tend to form a bell-curve for a given trait, showing the genetic diversity spread around an optimum. Move the optimum and the bell curve will quickly shift. Evolution has no problem on this front.
There are many more examples of pure nonsense, but don't waste your time looking for them, even for a laugh. This book is a terrible attempt by a physicist to talk about a subject outside his area of expertise, but it is a great example of why one should not try to write books about subjects outside one's area of expertise.
May 13, 2021
Good book
September 2, 2025
Those probability numbers on random genetic change are amazing! Dr. Spetner provides an excellent treatment of the question of "impossible odds" with real-world examples divorced from the bias of evolution's required deep time.
November 20, 2012
Made for a very boring read. I thought that spetner refutes the "fact of evolution". But he does not, and as I discovered mid-book, he does accept the evolution of species, just not through randomness.
January 31, 2016
Impressive. The author shows in fine fashion that randomness cannot be the progenitor of the wealth of information that has developed in living organisms. I enjoyed this one immensely, and highly recommend it as an antidote to less rigorous treatments of the issue.
November 25, 2009
What I learned: Some question the ability of random mutations plus natural selection to account for the information in DNA.
December 27, 2009
Solid arguments against the dogma of neo-darwinism. Not nearly as readable or fun as Behe
Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews