Review of Perry Marshall’s Book EVOLUTION 2.0

Perry Marshall is a gifted writer, a clever internet marketer, and a man who believes that Jesus Christ authored the genetic code. A few months back, Marshall sent me a copy of his book, Evolution 2.0; Breaking the Deadlock Between Darwin and Design, and asked if I would read and review it. Besides writing the book, Marshall has also put forth a challenge to the world claiming he will give millions of dollars to anyone who can prove that code can be generated without an intelligent designer. As you might expect, the challenge comes with some cleverly designed caveats enabling him to easily avoid having to pay. Below I give you the first section of my review of his book. In later posts I’ll write about his challenge. 

After reading it cover to cover (well... pixel to pixel on my Kindle app), it seems that the main point of Marshall’s book, Evolution 2.0, is to set up a god-of-the-gaps argument designed to convince us all that the existence of the genetic code points to the existence of God.

"All codes are created by a conscious mind; there is no natural process known to science that creates coded information. Therefore DNA was designed by a mind." pg 192

If that were the only message presented in this book I would have stopped at chapter 1 and given the entire thing zero stars. I'm happy to report, however, that Marshall also makes several thought-provoking arguments in Evolution 2.0 that do deserve some attention.

Marshall’s overall writing style was pleasant to read and gives us an intimate glimpse into his worldview, personal thought processes, and his continued relationship with his brother who has fallen away from their childhood faith.

Marshall is an electrical engineer by training, not a biologist, and though there were a shocking (no pun intended) number of factual errors in the book, I did enjoy his unique perspective as an outsider to the field of biology. I especially loved his chapter on epigenetics which is possibly the best overview of the topic that I have read to date.

Because of the factual errors in the book, I can’t recommend it to readers who are new to biology. That said, those who are sufficiently well versed in evolutionary theory might enjoy Marshall’s outsider's perspective of the field. I also recommend this book to science educators who would like to stay up to date on the kinds of arguments that are currently being put forth by the anti-evolution movement. In general, Marshall is not anti-evolution. He accepts common ancestry and that natural causes are responsible for the bulk of what we see in biology. That said, what I see as the main thesis of his book is nothing more than a tired, old, god-of-gaps argument, similar to those we've been hearing since Darwin first published his theory in the mid 1800s.

Just to be clear, I see no problem with scientists believing in God and even being inspired by their theology to motivate their research. For this reason (though I don't subscribe to their beliefs) I have been a long time supporter of Biologos.org and what they call theistic evolution—the idea that through faith, a person can continue to believe that God is behind all of creation while simultaneously accepting the science of biology without having to censor it. 

Unlike the faith taught at Biologos, Perry Marshall's faith seems to depend directly on some sort of evidence that God exists. In the book he says:

"...if science really told me that no God, no plan, no intentionality was needed for me to have a wonderfully engineered hand at the end of my arm, then I would make a massive, wholesale change in my belief system." page 7

Though I don't want to put words in his mouth, he seems to be saying here that if there is no evidence of God or miracles, he will become an atheist. This is interesting. With this perspective you might expect that he, and others who think like him, would be actively seeking positive evidence for the existence of God—something that could be observed, documented, and presented to the scientific community for critical review. I would personally love to be presented with positive evidence that God exists and that through Jesus I might have a chance to survive death. Likewise, I think it would be wonderful to be presented with positive evidence that aliens built the pyramids. Instead though, I cringe time and again as I hear creationists and alien believers continually take the lazy way out and think they're somehow being profound: "science doesn't know how such and such happened, therefore aliens/God did it!"

Like many creationists before him, instead of searching for positive evidence of God's existence, Perry Marshall has found what he thinks are gaps in our scientific knowledge, filled those gaps with God, and is content to claim victory for Jesus until someone can prove a natural solution to his favorite unsolved mystery. Oddly enough, in conversation with me on twitter, and in chapter 24 of his book, Perry Marshall specifically claims that he's not making a god-of-the-gaps argument because of the fact that he's offering money to anyone that can fill his favorite gap with a natural cause instead of God. The mental gymnastics on display here are simply amazing.

Though I see huge problems with the main argument put forth in this book, I give it 2 solid stars out of 5. If factual errors were corrected, I'd give it 3.

In the next few posts I will present and comment on several of the claims Perry Marshall puts forth in Evolution2.0:

Next Post In Series >>

Claim #1: The genetic code is not analogous to code, it literally is a code

Claim #2: The rules of a language are always defined in advance

Claim #3: All codes whose origin we know are designed

Claim #4: You must have code before evolution can work (post coming soon)

Claim #5: Mutations are not random (post coming soon)

Claim #6: Biology teachers should emphasize transposition, horizontal gene transfer, epigenetics, symbiogenesis, and gene duplication instead of point mutations. (post coming soon)

Claim #7: Cells are intelligent (post coming soon)

Claim #8: Complex error correction systems had to exist before evolution could happen (post coming soon)

Claim #9, the big kahuna: Jesus Christ authored the genetic code (post coming soon)

(updated 5/24/2016 at Perry Marshall's request that I mention chapter 24)