The Waiting-Times Problem

Among the many serious problems besetting any theory of blind, unguided evolution is something called the "waiting-times problem." David Klinghoffer discusses this in his fine book on the work of biologist Richard Sternberg. The book is titled Plato's Revenge: The New Science of the Immaterial Genome, and it outlines Sternberg's argument for a genetic influence that has no physical presence in the living cell, not in DNA, RNA, or what's called the epigenome. It's immaterial.

In Klinghoffer's discussion of the waiting-times problem he quotes Sternberg's summary of it: "if a particular trait needs two or more mutations - not to appear simultaneously, but just for two changes to coalesce, to come together in an individual - such that an adaptive trait appears, how much time would that take?"

Biologists have estimated that in humans it would take 216 million years for just two mutations that would have a beneficial impact in a population. In whales, which have a different generation time and breeding population sizes, it would take 43 million years for just two beneficial mutations to arise to change just a single trait.

The standard Darwinian model of evolution asserts that whales evolved from a land mammal named Pakicetus, but the waiting time for descendants of Pakicetus to evolve into whales would far exceed any amount of time plausibly available for such a transition to occur. It would require tens of thousands of changes in the animal,

changes to the eyes, changes to hearing, changes to the reproductive system. Modification to the body, so that instead of walking on four limbs, the body adopts a torpedo shape..., that has hydrodynamic properties....changes to the musculature....changes to the vertebral column. The origin of a tail fluke, and all of the musculature and neurological systems for coordinating that. Changes in breathing are very important....when diving the blow hole [must remain] closed....[The animal] has to be able to sleep at sea....[and do so] while most of the body is underwater.

These changes are just a fraction of the problems that would have to be overcome for a land mammal to evolve into a whale. It's like taking a Volkswagen Beetle, modifying it to be able to explore the ocean depths, and doing so through some random process. How long would it take for all the necessary mutations to occur?

The standard model states that whales didn't exist 50 million years ago and evolved from Pakicetus over a period of 14 million years, but it would've taken 43 million years for just a single change to have occurred. That's the waiting-times problem.

Sternberg maintains that there's something extrinsic to the material world, something immaterial (like Plato's Forms) that guides the evolutionary process and gives it direction. Without that, the waiting-times problem makes evolution - purely materialistic Darwinism - incomprehensible.

Of course, modern Intelligent Design theorists have been saying this same thing for almost fifty years.