Part I: A Critique of River Out of Eden: Our Celestial Prison

Abstract

The analogy of supernovae is applied to the information explosion taking place on our planet that he calls the replication bomb, linking it to DNA. The exponential growth of information is unrelated to the growth of digitized DNA information, because the linear branches of the evolutionary tree are unrelated acccording toDawkins’ reckoning. The vast majority of historical species are extinct so the river of genes must be drying up. He cites a simple self replicating chemical of two links in its chain as evidence that life must have started as a chemical accident while DNA can have billions of nucleotide links wrapped around complex histone spools. Chemical reactions in a cell require protein enzymes that employ non-covalent forces to catalyze them in highly recursive patterns so the cell survives by complex energy patterns that are not chemical in nature. Dawkins proceds to identify ten thresholds triggered by the replication threshold, essentially following a process of hierarchical order contrary to the Darwinian position of random order that he is otherwise committed to.