Stephen Meyer Takes On Darwin’s Tree

Everyone has seen the iconic tree of life depicted by Darwin. But in this bonus interview released as part of the Science Uprising series, best-selling author Stephen Meyer describes how the fossil record poses significant challenges to Darwin’s tree of life. When one studies the various biological forms of the fossil record, one finds that these forms remain static with slight variations until the species either goes extinct or persists into the present day. According to Meyer, “we don’t see the kind of morphing from one major morphological innovation into another that you would expect on the basis of Darwinian theory.“ Meyer argues that while the fossil record demonstrates some transitions in the history of life, evidence for the major transitions is lacking. He also challenges the claim that transitions are lacking because the fossil record simply didn’t preserve the transitional forms. Meyer then goes on to discuss population genetics and the “waiting times“ problem faced by the Darwinian mechanism. S