Journal of Creation 37(1):26–28, April 2023
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Evolutionary flights of fancy
A review of: Flights of Fancy: Defying gravity by design & evolution
Richard Dawkins, illustrated by Jana Lenᵶová
Head of Zeus Ltd, 2021
Retired University of Oxford professor Richard Dawkins’ colourfully illustrated book The Magic of Reality (2011) was intended to persuade younger readers that evolution was ‘really true’.1 His most recent book, Flights of Fancy, is in the same vein, although not explicitly aimed at children. Dawkins is a very good writer, and the beautiful illustrations by talented Slovakian artist Jana Lenᵶová make for an enjoyable reading experience. Needless to say, however, this is another propaganda piece for evolution, although those arguments do not really begin in earnest until chapters 12–13 of this 14-chapter work.
Along the way, the author surveys the marvellous diversity of flight exhibited by various living organisms, as well as human dreams of flight down the centuries of time—everything from the legendary Icarus, Leonardo da Vinci’s depictions of winged angels, hot air balloons, parachutes, gliders, and the succession of powered flying machines. There are lessons in aerodynamics, the significance of size in relation to various types of flight, and even musings about the urge to fly away from our planet and to visit other worlds. Much of the book is commendable, but I will restrict this review to the origins-related matters covered in the latter chapters.
Fanciful forays about flight
Richard Dawkins seemingly intended the title of his book to be a double-entendre: flights of fancy includes both the imagination and ingenuity of humans in devising flying machines and the supposed power of evolution to generate the wonderful diversity of flying animals. One can hope that it might dawn on a proportion of his readers that many of the author’s evolutionary stories are also little more than flights of fancy. Three examples follow.
Evolution of gliding?
Dawkins admits to preferring “the ‘trees-down’ theory” of flight evolution to “the ‘ground up’ running theory”, when it comes to the evolution of gliding mammals (pp. 258, 260). He admits, however, that both theories may be invoked, depending on the particular type of vertebrate that one is imagining taking to the skies. For example, most advocates of dino-to-bird evolution prefer the ‘ground up’ (cursorial) theory for developing flapping bird flight. In fact, both models are flawed. It is hard to take the ‘trees-down’ idea seriously, even when buoyed along by a skilful writer like Dawkins, as in the following example:
“Any squirrel might have a little loose skin in its armpits. That loose skin will slightly increase the squirrel’s surface area without adding much to its weight. This skin flap will work like a bushy tail but more effectively to slightly increase the distance the squirrel can leap without falling. … Whatever gap a particular squirrel can jump, the canopy will present some slightly longer gaps which another squirrel can jump because it has a slightly larger area of skin flap. And so we have the beginnings of another smooth gradient of improvement. Which is all we need for our evolutionary argument” (p. 255).
Seriously? How is this qualitatively different from ‘How the camel got his hump’ and other Just So Stories by Rudyard Kipling? The author’s descriptions of the supposed origin of mammalian flapping flight similarly fails to rise to higher levels of sophistication. Perhaps appeals to the paleontological evidence might help?
“As it happens, there are no useful fossils to tell us how bats first launched themselves into the air, but it’s easy to imagine a plausible gradient” [emphasis added]” (p. 256).
Easy it might be, but imagination does not qualify as science.
Dawkins makes a similar appeal to “a gradient of improvement” (p. 266) from observations of chicks of the Australian brush turkey (megapodes). 2 The hatchlings are incredibly precocious: fully-feathered, and able to run and fly on the day of hatching! They flap their wings to help in running up almost vertical tree trunks, so the author asks readers to imagine brush turkey ancestors climbing progressively steeper slopes (over deep time), less well-developed wings evolving into better ones. The problem is that imagined evolutionary gradients are no substitute for scientific evidence.
Evolution of wings?
Theories of wing evolution are many and various. Regarding insects, some argue that wings evolved from modified gills. Others imagine that aquatic nymphs scooted along the water using ‘sails’ (the precursors of wings), or else that they developed stubby structures that stuck out as ‘solar panels’ to help them warm up—these stubs later evolving into proper wings. In the latter scenario:
“As the wings became larger, they found themselves automatically becoming more useful as flight surfaces. These later evolved into proper wings” (p. 268).
Mr Kipling strikes again! But these evolutionary flights of fancy are unsurprising considering the striking paucity of evidence for insect wing evolution. Erica McAlister is Senior Curator of the Diptera (and Siphonaptera) at London’s Natural History Museum. Here is the sum total of what she had to say on the subject of insect wing evolution in her superb book The Inside Out of Flies:
“How wings evolved, and from what structures, has still not been resolved, due to very limited fossil evidence to help us understand what evolutionary process occurred. It is thought wings evolved only once in insects, and that was some time around 370–330 million years ago during the Upper Devonian or Lower Carboniferous … .”3
Undeterred, Dawkins also considers the evolution of flying mammals a cinch:
“Far from being difficult, for the ancestors of bats, the task of evolving a patagium and then wings would have been easy: just a matter of refraining from apoptosis, accompanied by lengthening the finger bones relative to the arm bones [emphasis in original]” (p. 258).
Apoptosis is a program of cell death (deletion) which is involved in the selective removal of tissue between the digits of the developing mammalian limb bud. But these things are not simple at all and no amount of hand waving can prevent his idea from crashing to the ground. For one thing, production of a suitable bat patagium (forewing membrane) results from a highly complex interplay of pro- and anti-apoptotic protein signals in the developing infant bat, a veritable molecular choreography. Too much apoptosis (unconstrained) would result in no patagium forming (producing an earth-bound bat). Too little apoptosis would mean that thick, heavy webbing would remain in the interdigital areas, a massive encumbrance for the poor creature, prohibiting flight. As I have demonstrated elsewhere, biologists know that it is categorically not a simple “matter of refraining from apoptosis”.4
Evolution of feathers?
A discussion of flight in birds would be incomplete without accounting for the origin of feathers. Unfortunately, here too, readers are served outdated tall stories rather than scientific argument:
“Feathers are modified reptile scales. They probably originally evolved not for flight but for heat insulation like mammalian hair. Once again we see evolution taking advantage of what’s already there. … It has only recently been discovered that, before true birds evolved, feathers were common among the group of dinosaurs from which birds sprang. It even seems likely that the dreaded Tyrannosaurus had feathers” (p. 99).
Such claims, albeit made by certain leading tyrannosaur experts, are simply wishful thinking.5 On the contrary, fossil skin impressions of large theropod dinosaurs reveal their integument to have had a great variety of scales, but no trace of feathers; imaginative theorising notwithstanding.6 Chapters 17 and 18 of Sarfati and Tay’s recently published Titans of the Earth provide an up-to-date assessment of alleged dino-bird evolution theories and the various fossil candidates.7 The alleged ‘discovery’ that many dinosaurian ancestors of birds were feathered is merely an assertion, and Dawkins fails to acknowledge that this point is hotly disputed by some avian experts, though themselves evolutionists. Surprisingly, he does not even mention claims of featherlike structures in pterosaurs, published nearly three years before his own book.8
R&D vs thoughtless evolution
The author compares and contrasts millions of years of slow-and-gradual evolution of flying animals with decades-long human research and development (R&D) of flying machines. He opines that people are mistaken when they conclude that the similar end results imply a similar method:
“With animals, the [R&D] process … takes many generations spread over millions of years. No thought goes into it, no clever ideas, no deliberate ingenuity, no creative inventiveness. All that happens is that some individuals in the population just happen, by random genetic luck (mutation and sexual shuffling of genes), to be a little bit better than average at, say, flying” (p. 236).
And lest his readers have failed to grasp the point he is trying to make, he adds:
“Slowly, slowly, gradually, gradually, generation by generation, the good-at-flying genes become more numerous in the population. The bad-at-flying genes become less numerous, as animals that possess them are a little bit more likely to die or fail to reproduce. … So, after lots of generations, after millions of years of accumulating good flying genes in the population, what do we see? We see a population of very good flyers … just as if a human engineer had perfected the design on a drawing board and tested it in a wind tunnel [emphasis added]” (p. 237).
But no, the artificer was really a ‘blind watchmaker’. Dawkins assures readers that the good animal flying structures seen today represent the culmination of a mindless trajectory. They are, he says shamelessly, “the end products of … evolutionary design”, an oxymoron if there ever was one! Human designers seeking to design a new flying machine can start afresh, but Neo-Darwinism cannot go back to a blank drawing board. “Evolution is opportunistic: it tends to modify what is already there rather than sprout something completely new” (p. 94). It is not envisaged as growing wings on an organism from scratch, but incrementally modifies existing limbs into wings. Limited this may be, but that is because: “Evolution is condemned to modify previous designs step by tiny step. And every step along the way has to survive at least long enough to reproduce” (p. 242).
Notice the word ‘design’ again—it seems he cannot help himself.
Those rather silly creationists!
Anyone familiar with Richard Dawkins’ writings will half expect a little dig, here and there, at those who believe that the ‘design’ he keeps talking about points to a designing Creator. It is not long in coming:
“There are still some people who don’t believe in evolution, in spite of the overwhelming evidence in its favour. They want to believe that bird and bat wings, like plane wings, are produced by deliberate creative design: design by some kind of supernatural master engineer. They’re called creationists. You won’t find them in proper universities. But there are plenty of them in less educated circles” (p. 251).
A tired, hackneyed claim to be sure. Apparently, the author is convinced that the cooked-up yarns he has served up to his readers really are ‘overwhelming evidence’ for the evolution of flight in living organisms. Dawkins is well aware that his put-down of creationists is quite untrue but his deceit is in the service of evolutionary propaganda. Numerous credentialed creationists have studied and/or still teach at ‘proper universities’.9
Moreover, at the risk of sounding churlish, educated evolutionists in the universities have some very fanciful ideas themselves. Indeed, the author himself, in the final chapter of his aptly named Flights of Fancy, contemplates flying to, and colonizing, other planets. For what purpose? To perpetuate the human species should a pending massive extraterrestrial impact spell doom for our home planet:
“But whatever the threat to Earth, whether it’s a comet or an unstoppable plague, there’s something to be said for … founding a colony of humans on another planet such as Mars. Of course, Mars might also be struck by a giant asteroid. But both planets would not be struck by the same one—or by some plague—and you’ve surely heard the proverb about putting all your eggs in one basket” (pp. 276–277).
Silliness can be found in all sorts of places!
Final thoughts
This review has focused upon the sections of Flights of Fancy with which biblical creationists and design theorists would take issue. Most of the first 230 pages are good reading, marred by the final 50 pages of fancy masquerading as science. A notable exception to this is Dawkins’ belittling of the value and dignity of human life:
“Disagreeable as the thought might be to starry-eyed idealists not used to thinking like economists, human life is not infinitely precious. We put monetary value on it” (p. 68).
Au contraire! And this brings us to the heart of why Flights of Fancy is ultimately a big let-down. It fails to credit the Designer God for the fascinating array of flight designs in diverse fauna, and it even attacks the one creature made in His image. And, in truth, it is a well-presented package of lies, wrapped in pleasant prose and pictures.
References and notes
- Bell, P., Evolution Answers Book? A review of The Magic of Reality: How we know what’s really true (Bantam Press, London, 2011), J. Creation 26(1):31–36, 2012. Return to text.
- Brush turkeys, Alectra lathami, are members of the family Megapodidae, sometimes known as incubator birds or mound-builders because of their method of incubating their eggs in huge mounds of decaying vegetation. Return to text.
- McAlister, E., The Inside Out of Flies, Natural History Museum, London, p. 162, 2020. Return to text.
- Bell, P.B., Pattern of programmed cell death in bat wing membrane—support for evolution? J. Creation 21(1):3–4, 2007. Return to text.
- For example, Edinburgh University palaeontologist and author Steve Brusatte thinks that, in spite of a lack of direct fossil evidence, “we have good reason to believe T. rex did have some feathers”; Brusatte, S., Did T. rex actually have feathers? Sciencefocus.com, 27 Oct 2022. Return to text.
- Bell, P.R. and 6 others, Tyrannosauroid integument reveals conflicting patterns of gigantism and feather evolution, Biology Letters 13(6), 7 Jun 2017 | doi.org/10.1098/rsbl.2017.0092. Return to text.
- Particularly chapters 17–18 of: Sarfati, J. and Tay, J., Titans of the Earth, Sea, and Air, Creation Book Publishers, Powder Springs, GA, 2022. Return to text.
- A good critique of these claims is: Tay, J., Feathered pterosaurs: ruffling the feathers of dinosaur evolution, J. Creation 33(2):93–98, 2019. Return to text.
- For instance, a list of many such people can be found under the section, ‘Scientists alive today who accept the biblical account of creation’, Creation scientists. Many in this list are hyperlinked to a dedicated article, giving their credentials, research, and personal information. Return to text.
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