Richard Dawkins River Out Of Eden Analysis

Stories of creation have been around since the dawn of man or, woman depending on an individuals beliefs. According to biologist and author Richard Dawkins, Darwinian theory has the power to explain natural occurrences in the universe. In Dawkins scientific literature “River Out of Eden: A Darwinian View of Life,” his mission is to disprove religious views of the beginning of life with what he passes off as empirical scientific evidence. In the preface he states “There is more poetry in mitochondrial Eve than in her mythological namesake” (Dawkins xi), one can conclude that the mythological namesake he is referring to is Eve from the biblical text. Throughout the Chapter 2 Dawkins religious texts about creationism as “the myth” while, Mitochondrial Eve holds more evidence, validity, pure reasoning or how he puts it “poetry.” Dawkin’s Darwinian views of life have a few inconsistencies that he glosses over with fanciful language, metaphors, some science, and his “cult-like” views of Darwinism.

According to Dawkins, “All earthly living thing are certainly descended from a single ancestory” (Dawkins 12) meaning that if we travel back far enough along the genetic river of life we will reach one common ancestor.

The “river” that Dawkins is referring to in his title is a metaphor for a river of DNA with approximately thirty million branches for every organism on Earth. When it comes to evolution and species divergences Dawkins believes in gradualism stating, “When the ancestors of all modern mammals broke away from those that are not mammals the event was no more momentous than any other speciation. It would have gone unremarked by any naturalist who happened to be around at the time” (Dawkins

9).
Ultimately Dawkins believes that, speciation can go unnoticed because “the change” within species is so gradual that it is almost be physically unnoticeable at its early stages.

However, Dawkins leaves out one large unanswered question “Why does the brancing of species occur?” His only reasoning is that among a species “Geographical seperation bred a lack of compatibility” (Dawkins 7). Dawkins refers to these geographical seperations as “furtuitous results” (Dawkins 25), blatantly stating that he does not have the knowledge to explain why these occurences happen. Dawkins has plenty of hypotheses for Darwinism, meaning he has proposed explanations for how life came about with limited evidence and his end conclusion comes down to luck. He also never explicity states who or what the most common ancestor to all life is. Most of Dawkins reasoning comes down to what he calls “armchair logic” which he should call it armchair theorizing since there is such a large absence of evidence.

The Darwinian view of life states that every living organism originated from a single unknown ancestor and this ancestor was able to contribute its genetic sequence to bacteria, plants, and animals through eons of speciation, evolution, and natural selection. If this is true then there would have to be an ancestor that all modern humans descended from or a beginning to our branch that leaped the banks of Dawkins genetic river. According to the Berkely group of researchers, African Eve or Mitochondrial Eve is is the most recent common ancestor of all modern Homo Sapiens along the female only line. Mitochondrial Eve was able to outsurvive her contemporaries of the Homo Genus groups who have no descendants alive today. Unlike Nuclear DNA, mitochondrial DNA isn’t altered by sex because it is able to make identical copies of itself by dividing like bacteria. Dawkins refers to Mitochondrial DNA as being “blessedly celibate” (Dawkins 47), Dawkins use of the word “blessedly” could make one question whether his view of Mitochondria as parochial.
However, Mitochondrial Eve could not have reproduced like bacteria, she must have had a companion whose genes were able to work with hers to produce two daughters resulting in the Homo Sapiens species. With no scientific certainty as to when Eve lived, where she lived, or her companion it is difficult to see the poetry or validity that Dawkins claims exists. Mitochondrial Eve also raises the question to the “chicken and the egg paradox” (Dawkins 23) that Dawkins mentions in Chapter one. One can ask “Who produced the unbroken female only line Mitochondrial Eve or her mother?” Her mother may have likely been the common ancestor between chimpanzees, bonobos, and humans that Dawkins mentions in his “Why are there still Chimpanzees?” video, but we simply do not have the knowledge to confidently answer that.
Dawkins nor Darwinism adds any empirical evidence to the beliefs about life as we know it because none of the proposed theories follow the scientific method. There is also no definite proof for Darwinism and contrary to Dawkins beliefs there is a lot left to be explained. Some may view Darwinism as cult-like dogma with religous undertones, similar to how Dawkins views individuals who believe in creationism. When it comes to texts about creation maybe cultural relativists are somewhat justified in saying, “We are just brought up in a culture that see the world in a scientific way” (Dawkins 31). Maybe religious texts are simply metaphors for life just as Dawkins compares embryonic development to origami, or his mothers comparison of our nerve cells to telephone wires. Dawkins seperates religion from science by saying, “Scientific beliefs are supported by evidence, and they get results” (Dawkins 33), if this is his view of science he is also a hypocrite.