3 Dawkinsian arguments for evolution that didn't age well
time has not been kind to Dawkins
Two of these have been mentioned previously by Richard Buggs, over at this blog. Lets go over his two again and then I will add the latest.
Bacterial flagellum
In his book 2006 book The God Delusion, Richard Dawkins writes
“The protein molecules that form the structure of the TTSS are very similar to components of the flagellar motor. To the evolutionist it is clear that TTSS components were commandeered for a new, but not wholly unrelated, function when the flagellar motor evolved…Evidently, crucial components of the flagellar motor were already in place and working before the flagellar motor evolved.”
Fast forward, and today we know this no longer holds:
“Although the flagellum has been proposed to be the evolutionary ancestor of T3SSs, the structure of the flagellar motor is significantly different from that of the T3SS basal body. The rod in the basal body of the Salmonella T3SS consists of two proteins, PrgJ and PrgI, and adopts a relatively simple helical structure. In contrast to the tight contacts of the T3SS rod with the secretin channel and the inner membrane ring, the flagellar rod has few contacts with the LP ring to facilitate its high-speed rotation and torque transmission. In addition, unlike the C24-symmetric inner membrane ring assembled by PrgH and PrgK in the Salmonella T3SS, the MS ring of the flagellar motor is composed of 34 FliF subunits with mixed internal symmetries. Therefore, the flagellar motor has evolved special structural elements for bacterial motility.” [1]
Gene Phylogenetic analyses
Richard Buggs writes:
Take a look at this video hosted by the Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason & Science YouTube Channel. In the video (8:40 minutes in), Dawkins is asked to name the single best piece of evidence for evolution. His response is to claim that phylogenetic analyses of different genes and pseudogenes each independently give us "the same family tree" for the species that carry them. This congruence between gene trees is "overwhelmingly strong evidence" for evolution - the only alternative being a deceptive creator.
Dawkins makes the same claim more fully in his book The Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution (2009). He writes:
"Comparative DNA (or protein) evidence can be used to decide - on the evolutionary assumption - which pairs of animals are closer cousins than which others. What turns this into extremely powerful evidence for evolution is that you can construct a tree of genetic resemblances separately for each gene in turn. And the important result is that every gene delivers approximately the same tree of life. Once again, this is exactly what you would expect if you were dealing with a true family tree. It is not what you expect if a designer had surveyed the whole of the animal kingdom and picked and chosen - or 'borrowed' - the best proteins for the job, wherever in the animal kingdom they might be found." (pp. 321-322; emphasis added)
Today of course we know that virtually no two genes form a tree. I asked ChatGPT if the statement that “no two genes give same tree” and got this reply:
The statement "no two genes give the same tree incongruence" is generally true in the context of phylogenetic analysis. Incongruence, or differences in branching patterns, between gene trees (trees built from individual genes) is a common phenomenon, and the specific patterns of incongruence can vary significantly between genes.
99% Chimpanzee similarity
To be fair to Dawkins, he was merely repeating the claims made by other evolutionists. Thus in his classic The Blind Watchmaker, Dawkins writes that chimps and humans “share more than 99 percent” of their genes” (Dawkins, 1986, p. 263).
It turns out however that this was based on very selective analysis of genes, the most recent comparison of complete ape genomes brings this figure down from 1% to 15%! [2]
References
1. Structural basis of assembly and torque transmission of the bacterial flagellar motor Tan, Jiaxing et al. Cell, Volume 184, Issue 10, 2665 - 2679.e19 (2021)
Yoo, D., Rhie, A., Hebbar, P. et al. Complete sequencing of ape genomes. Nature 641, 401–418 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-025-08816-3