Copyright 2005 Rick Harrison
Introduction
It has been an exciting time in science following the meeting
of the cadre of intelligent design (ID) scientists at the home of attorney
Phillip Johnson on a
You may be thinking, “What’s so exciting?” “I’m a Catholic; why should I care? Evolution—smevolution. It’s all the same to me.”[2] Although scientists confidently inform our school boards and federal courts that there has never been a conflict between God and “evolution,” this is not what the neo-Darwinists tell our students in college textbooks. It is not what they tell the public in popular books on evolution, and it is not what is claimed in the core writings of neo-Darwinian evolutionary theory. And, perhaps most surprisingly of all, it is not the teaching of the Church, at least as pertains to the neo-Darwinian form of evolution.
Catholic/Christian teaching is, as one would expect, in direct opposition to all God-incompatible formulations of evolutionary theory. His Holiness Pope John Paul II, in his 1996 “Message to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences: On Evolution,” taught us that although basic evolution does not conflict with the Bible and the faith, some forms of evolutionary theory do.
And to tell the truth, rather than
speaking about the theory of evolution, it is more accurate to speak of the
theories of evolution. The use of the plural is required here—in part because
of the diversity of explanations regarding the mechanism of evolution, and in
part because of the diversity of philosophies involved. There are materialist
and reductionist theories, as well as spiritualist theories. Here the final
judgment is within the competence of philosophy and, beyond that, of
theology...
It is by virtue of his eternal
soul that the whole person, including his body, possesses such great dignity.
Pius XII underlined the essential point: if the origin of the human body comes
through living matter which existed previously, the spiritual soul is created
directly by God ("animas enim a Deo immediate creari catholica fides non
retimere iubet"). (Humani Generis)
As a result, the theories
of evolution which, because of the philosophies which inspire them, regard the
spirit either as emerging from the forces of living matter, or as a simple
epiphenomenon of that matter, are incompatible with the truth about man. They
are therefore unable to serve as the basis for the dignity of the human person.[3]
Despite Pope John Paul II’s emphasizing the importance of distinguishing the different versions of evolutionary theory, Darwinists seldom bother with such niceties. All the while they freely (and mistakenly) remind the public that the Catholic Church endorses (their form of) “evolution.” At rock bottom, of course, the Catholic position is not even an endorsement of evolution as such, but only an endorsement of science as our only means to discover the mechanics of creation, and only then when properly preformed (to the extent that we are to find them out at all). None of the theological tenets of the Church require an endorsement either of evolution or of any alternative view. In other words, the Bible is not, even in part, a book of science, but purely a book of theology. It says that God made the world and its life forms; it does not say how he made them. As Cardinal, Archbishop of Vienna, Christoph Schönborn explains in his new book, Chance or Purpose, when scientists deign to step outside science’s appropriate bounds and claim that there is no God they have entered the realm of metaphysics and ideology and left their scientific credentials behind. They are then doing politics and personal philosophy, not science. The position of the Church is too easily misrepresented in such a process. To avoid serious error one must always distinguish between basic evolution, accidental/atheistic evolution (the neo-Darwinian form), and the God-compatible versions of Synthetic Theory.[4]
Even so, if the versions of evolution opposed to the faith were obscure and infrequently held views, our concern would be slight. The Church does not wish to impede freedom of thought, but rather to preserve both genuine scientific truth and the truths of the faith, which are held never to conflict. Unfortunately, the primary version of evolutionary theory that is being taught in our schools and colleges, neo-Darwinian evolution, has the very flaws that make it incompatible with the Christian faith: materialism and the denial of intelligent design/cosmic purpose!
Given that important differences in worldview are
entailed by the various versions of evolutionary theory, and, once again, that some of them are not even properly scientific, we cannot, as the neo-Darwinists do,
simply speak of evolution as if it were one single homogenous theory. We must
distinguish the variants to preserve clarity
and integrity regarding the relationship of God and science. Pope John Paul
II’s position statement to this effect is further developed in the current
In continuity with previous
twentieth century papal teaching on evolution (especially Pope Pius XII’s
encyclical Humani Generis ),
the Holy Father’s message acknowledges that there are “several theories of
evolution” that are “materialist, reductionist and spiritualist” and thus
incompatible with the Catholic faith. It follows that the message of Pope John
Paul II cannot be read as a blanket approbation of all theories of evolution,
including those of a neo-Darwinian provenance which explicitly deny to
divine providence any truly causal role in the development of life in the
universe.[5] [My
emphasis]
Christoph Cardinal Schönborn, Cardinal Archbishop of
Ever since 1996, when Pope John Paul II said that
evolution (a term he did not define) was "more than just a
hypothesis," defenders of neo-Darwinian dogma have often invoked the
supposed acceptance - or at least acquiescence - of the Roman Catholic Church
when they defend their theory as somehow compatible with Christian faith.
But this is not true. The Catholic Church, while leaving
to science many details about the history of life on earth, proclaims that by
the light of reason the human intellect can readily and clearly discern purpose
and design in the natural world, including the world of living things.
Evolution in the sense of common ancestry might be
true, but evolution in the neo-Darwinian sense - an unguided, unplanned process
of random variation and natural selection - is not. Any system of thought that
denies or seeks to explain away the overwhelming evidence for design in biology
is ideology, not science.[6]
As some who have followed this
issue know, the “flak” came from Father George V. Coyne, a priest and scientist who was Director
of the Vatican Observatory until August 2006. Coyne sharply criticized Cardinal Schönborn’s
editorial. Father Coyne, however, was speaking as an individual scientist, not
as the Pope’s spokesman. The Vatican Observatory is an advisory body to the
Have our most astute Church leaders imagined this conflict? Not at all. Neo-Darwinian evolutionists have historically not only affirmed an accidental/purposeless worldview but integrated that assumption into their evolutionary writings as if it were fully entailed by the scientific evidence. The truths of science entail no such thing, however. The neo-Darwinists have also openly disparaged religion and affirmed that the more “enlightened” views of atheism and materialism have been established by the advance of science. All poppycock, of course. The conflict between neo-Darwinian “theory” (which is really a combination of basic evolution with the personal philosophies of atheism and materialism, not a true scientific theory at all) and Catholic/Christian faith is undeniably real.
Dr. Sidney Fox, Director of The Institute for Molecular and Cellular Evolution at the University of Miami, 1964-1989, tells us in his book The Emergence of Life, that most scientists believed the events of physics and biology to be truly accidental until about 1965. This is when substantial dissent first arose to the accidental worldview originally hypothesized by Charles Darwin and later encouraged by physicists like Werner Heisenberg and Niels Bohr under the auspices of indeterminacy theory in particle physics (quantum mechanics). Despite the fact that science itself is impossible in a fully accidental world, as is natural law and any consistent structure in physical objects, many scientists early on fell in with the accidental school of thought, with some, like evolutionist Ernst Mayr, asserting that science can be confident in ruling out cosmic purpose in nature.
In their article, “The Meaning of the Theory of Evolution,” which constitutes chapter 2 of Grzimek’s Encyclopedia of Evolution, D. S. Peters and W. F. Gutmann lay out the conflict between neo-Darwinian evolution and intelligent design (and the Christian faith) in an unmistakable way by saying that evolutionary processes are truly accidental, denying both purpose and design. Professor Douglas Futuyma, in the 3rd edition of his textbook, Evolutionary Biology, does much the same thing, as does Dr. Monroe Strickberger in his textbook, Evolution:
[Peters & Gutmann] At this
point we would like to discuss some of the general cultural, spiritual, and
philosophical implications of the theory of evolution. Our pre-evolutionary
world view, powerfully influenced by the classical philosophers, was one that
attributed the diversity of life forms and their function to the presence of a
grand plan operating with a purposeful goal. Once life was examined under the
neutral observation of scientists, using the methodology employed to arrive at
the theory of evolution, we developed an entirely different understanding. The
process of evolution is not activated by some goal-oriented plan (e.g., ever
better adapted animals or more and more complex animals) but is instead the
result of chaotic, purely accidental changes in the genetic complement of
organisms.
[Futuyma] Second, people had long
sought the causes of phenomena in purposes: the will of God, or the FINAL
CAUSES (the purposes for which events occur).
[Strickberger] He [Darwin] thus
replaced what many had seen as an understandable view of nature—that is, the
creativity of a human like God—by the most heretical concepts of all,
randomness and uncertainty...Nevertheless, faith in religious dogma has been
eroded by natural explanations of its mysteries, by a deeper understanding of
the sources of human emotional needs, and by the recognition that ethics and
morality can change among different societies and that acceptance of such values
need not depend upon religion...The roots of religious beliefs lie in human
attempts to appeal to and control the forces of nature...From these roots arose
the concept of God and soul, both of which were supposed to be eternal and
immaterial.[8]
No purposeful goal, no goal oriented plan, chaotic, purely accidental. The lack of purpose explicitly acknowledged in this kind of formulation of evolutionary theory straightforwardly eliminates the possibility of God or an intelligent designer of life. Strickberger relegates religion to a mere psychological manifestation having no basis in fact, which is fully incompatible with the Christian faith. The important thing to keep in mind is that absolutely none of this is scientifically defensible. These are merely assertions of personal philosophical preference.
Monroe Strickberger is one of the three primary evolution textbook authors, as is Futuyma, along with Mark Ridley. Ridley, thankfully, takes a more rational view, as do most other scientists, allowing for the compatibility of God and science. Strickberger is less direct and less explicit in denying cosmic purpose than evolutionists like Ernst Mayr, Peters, Gutmann, and Futuyma, but he asserts a watered-down version of scientific materialism, affirming the Freudian view of religion as a mere psychological/sociological phenomenon. He also affirms moral relativism, and claims that religious dogma has been undermined by naturalistic explanations of its mysteries. Any competent priest, theologian or philosopher (and most scientists) will tell you that no such naturalistic explanation of the true mysteries of the faith has been achieved. Indeed, absolutely all of the physical universe owes its beginnings to an admittedly unnatural mystery: the Big Bang event. But if all of the world owes its beginnings to an unnatural event, how can any of science’s explanations be called purely natural? How, as Strickberger claims, did Darwin make theological explanations of life superfluous when absolutely all physical processes owe their origin to a an unnatural miracle-like event that remains a complete mystery to science? Another important thing to remember is that, although theological explanations are not scientific by definition, that does not make them superfluous. For nonscientific explanation to be totally superfluous science would have had to have satisfactorily explained everything, including, and especially origins, the origin of life and the origin of the universe. But these are precisely the two things science cannot explain.
Strickberger may try to fall back on a technicality of language here, claiming that he was addressing only the “life processes” (that is, traceable purpose in the biomechanics of organisms) not the origin of life. Darwin, himself, admitted that neither he nor science had an explanation as to the ultimate origins of life, and were not likely to ever discern the ultimate origin of things. But this is an unsatisfactory defense, for Strickberger said “the creativity of a human like God” had been replaced by randomness and uncertainty. Creation has to do with origins, not merely the intermediate biomechanics of life. In the realm of origins, however, theological explanation has in no way been supplanted by randomness and uncertainty. For that matter, neither has randomness and uncertainty found a secure home anywhere else in science as an explanatory principle. This is hardly surprising, for, contrary to what neo-Darwinists loudly claim, randomness cannot be demonstrated to be capable of producing any kind of a complex system whatsoever, living or otherwise.
The bald truth of the matter is that randomness or accident can never be an explanatory principle, for it has always been defined as the very antithesis of explanation itself in both science and philosophy. Common language use testifies to this same principle: “There is no explanation for that, it is just random,” and so on This is the largest contradiction that underlies the neo-Darwinian fairy tale, but not the only one. You will find many others scattered throughout the 70 neo-Darwinian fallacies at Appendix 1.
Strickberger and Futuyma could have made disclaimers of their atheistic and materialistic views as being the mere personal philosophical preferences they are rather than straightforward facts of evolutionary science, but they have not clarified matters in this way. Instead, their claims read as philosophical adjuncts to the theory of evolution, conceptual tenets the authors believe to be grounded in the scientific evidence. No such grounding exists, as we shall soon see. Not even quantum physics requires such a view, as quantum particle behavior in groups, that is, their statistical behavior, always turns out orderly in precisely the same way such that natural law, scientific knowledge and prediction are made possible. There can be nothing accidental about so consistent a phenomenon, one which provides the foundation for absolutely all of the orderly natural world, and indeed of science itself.
The cited authors are not alone in the history of evolutionary thought in affirming God-incompatible formulations of evolution. It is quite common, as much the standard as not. Even the late Stephen Jay Gould, co-originator of the theory of punctuated equilibrium, in the introduction to Carl Zimmer's text, Evolution: The Triumph of an Idea, says that evolution has no direction, no purpose and no goal. Ernst Mayr totally rejects cosmic purpose as scientifically indefensible. Theodosius Dobzhansky, one of the very fathers of modern evolutionary biology, was at the core of the new evolutionary synthesis[9] of the 1950’s that originated the two modern forms of evolutionary theory, Neo-Darwinian Theory and Synthetic Theory,[10] its God-compatible “twin.” Dobzhansky says this about the evolutionary process: “Though neither planned, guided, predestined or predetermined (except in the Laplacian sense of universal deterministic causality), the biological evolution gave rise to man.”[11]
What Dobzhansky has asserted here goes far beyond natural science into philosophy…and it is just terrible philosophy. What’s wrong with it? Deterministic causality is not only the perfect method for a designer to use, it is the only method available in a world where physical things are permitted to change over time. Without rules of causality things would fluctuate chaotically, making the world unlivable. There would be no way either to develop a design or to maintain one. The only alternative in such a case is for the designer of the universe to intervene constantly to impose his will upon creation in a continuous miracle. The designer might plausibly wish not to have his divine attention tied continuously to the maintenance of mundane physical systems and structures in this way. Lesser monarchs, that is, earthly kings would certainly balk at it. They would not enjoy being locked into the most extreme form of micromanagement. To arbitrarily say, with Dobzhansky, that we must exclude rules of causation as a means of design is simply to beg the question of God outright. There is no scientific argument in Dobzhansky’s statement, only an unevidenced philosophical assumption—and a false one.
Indirect causation is often the tool of choice for accomplishing a purpose. Therefore, its presence leading from a complete mystery suggesting the largest miracle that could ever be conceived to living systems so astronomically complex that chance would have no hope of achieving them is not to be dismissed. Billiards and pool are 100% about causation, as is hunting, cooking etc. Hitting the cue ball causes it to collide with the target ball, which causes additional collisions and, if one is fortunate, the dropping of the correct ball in the correct hole, the desired rebound, contacts, deflections and positioning. In the act of hunting one causes an arrow or bullet to fly towards a game animal under known rules of ballistics. Physical causation is everywhere used in the assembly of machines, in architecture and in engineering. In denying causation as a potential instrument of an intelligent designer, Dobzhansky is merely expressing his preferred personal worldview, not a finding of science. By ruling out arbitrarily, that is, for no good reason, the only method of creation over time available in the physical world, and then announcing triumphantly that there is no evidence for creation at all, he is, as Froehicky so eloquently says in the X-Files, “rigging the game.”
Throughout the history of the evolutionary debate Darwinists who have argued against God and intelligent design have really only argued against this implausible alternative of constant supernatural intervention because they have been unable to trace the causal chain of events from the Big Bang to human creation. They imply something much stronger to their readers, however, viz that they have ruled out all options for God and intelligent design (not just the inane and archaic ones), to include important future discoveries in science (and there is a lot of room for them) that trace the causality more precisely from the Big Bang to human creation.
In the future, the causal chain from the Big Bang to life will be known much more completely. It will be filled in further, perhaps, by referencing even the electromagnetic properties of amino acids and other chemical compounds. Interactions and related causal chains of events will be revealed at levels currently inaccessible to routine scientific study. Dobzhansky’s position that causation is irrelevant to purpose is therefore logically and scientifically unsupportable. At the very least it was fully premature, as science has revealed so much startling new data since Dobzhansky’s time that the genetic and microbiological knowledgebase available to evolutionists of his day was the merest fraction of what we have today, though our knowledge remains far from complete. To say that God could not create by way of a complex causal chain of events is simply bad logic, for there is nothing that so constrains him. A full discussion of the flaws in neo-Darwinian reasoning is presented in Appendix 1. Fallacies #24, 25, and 26, specifically, address the present question of the naïve neo-Darwinian view of God and cosmic purpose.
Causation, call it deterministic Newtonian mechanics or statistical quantum causation as you prefer (no difference accrues at the practical level) is, in theory, scientifically traceable all the way back to the Big Bang that created the universe. This is why Dobzhansky calls causation “universal;” it is everywhere in the physical world, that is, it is universal in scope. Causation includes everything except individual quantum particle behavior, particles too small to have any effect. It does include their group behavior, which is what generates regularity in the natural world. In saying that evolution was unplanned except for the determinism of physical causation, causation that includes everything capable of producing an effect on this side of the Big Bang, Dobzhansky must either be claiming to know something important about what lies on the other side of the mystery of the Big Bang, which is held to be scientifically impossible to know (viz that no intelligent design or purpose occurred there), or be saying something completely trivial: “except for everything physical there is no plan or purpose discernable in the physical world.” The first option is impossible, the second trivial and ridiculous.
Am I sure Dobzhansky’s profundity hasn’t escaped me? He is, after all, one of the fathers of modern evolutionary biology. He is undoubtedly a great biologist, but I refer you to rule number one for our present study: the neo-Darwinist is no philosopher. I’ll tell you how profound this is. It is like saying that we can differentiate no specific evidence for God or intelligent design in nature because it all looks like evidence! This is so because physical causation leads right back to a complete miracle-like mystery at the Big Bang where everything came from nothing in a fraction of a second on the one hand, and on the other, it advances forward from the Big Bang with amazing rapidity towards the astronomically complex designs of life, which it should never have achieved by accident in a trillion trillion lifetimes of our universe. Such an overabundance of evidence hardly argues against purpose in nature. Dobzhansky can be forgiven that mistake personally, as the Big Bang theory was not established until a few years after his statement was made. He might have based his position on the alternative assumption that the universe had always been exactly as it is and was itself eternal. Not so, science has since discovered.
Despite the fact that physical/cosmological processes have been much more visibly traced since Dobzhansky’s time, modern neo-Darwinists carry on the same doctrine minus Dobzhansky’s excuse. Dobzhansky could have recanted his statement, of course, when the Big Bang theory was later originated; it was well within his lifetime. Thus this objection remains a legitimate criticism to Dobzhansky’s published works taken as a whole.
In any case, neo-Darwinists present no convincing
reason for us to believe that the causal chain of events that proceeds in an
amazingly direct and rapid fashion from the Big Bang to human life, that is, in
a much more direct and rapid manner than an accident would conceivably do,
could not constitute the sequential implementation of a plan and purpose.
Physical events from the atomic level through basic chemistry to planetary
positioning are known to be amazingly fine-tuned in favor of life’s creation.[12]
Why couldn’t these physical constants and configurations, so heavily biased for
life, be the result of a plan to create life? Dobzhansky does not say. Modern
neo-Darwinists simply say that, from their individual human perspectives, the
process is not perfect based upon arbitrary humanist criteria, that is,
it does not proceed in a straight line to its goal and it allows suffering.
Therefore, they say, God could not have done it. In other words, they
apparently feel that God must be a humanist.
Neo-Darwinists/humanists have claimed much in opposition to religion through the years, apparently presuming that biological expertise automatically confers philosophical competence. The historical record does not bear this out. More capable commentators than I have remarked that the neo-Darwinist is no philosopher. Upon close examination, the structure and content of the neo-Darwinian case for lack of purpose in evolution turns out to be a complete logical shambles, lacking both scientific and philosophical merit.[13]
Nonetheless, noted philosophers have occasionally indorsed this transparently fallacious view. Consider this quote from Bertrand Russell.
It appears that during those ages when animals were torturing each other with ferocious horns and agonizing stings, Omnipotence was quietly waiting for the ultimate emergence of man, with his still more widely diffused cruelty. Why the Creator should have preferred to reach his goal by a process, instead of going straight to it, these modem theologians do not tell us.[14]
Although Bertrand Russell was certainly recognized as a great philosopher, as a scientist he was a mathematician not an evolutionist. Oddly, despite Russell’s intellectual brilliance and humanitarian compassion, and the fact that he was one of the greatest logicians of all time, he simply had a blind spot in his reasoning concerning the need to sort out the evil from the good. The fact that people may choose to be evil through the exercise of the God given gift of radical free will refutes the neo-Darwinist/humanist argument that God should have made and then maintained without interruption a suffering-free paradise from the very beginning. Russell’s position implies the mistaken belief that suffering is and can only be caused by flaws in nature, not by flaws in man. The truth is much to the contrary, as the war crime tribunals and daily headlines loudly proclaim. All of this notwithstanding, Russell was no fan of the frequently unfounded logic of evolutionists.
An
extra-terrestrial philosopher, who had watched a single youth up to the age of
twenty-one and had never come across any other human being, might conclude that
it is the nature of human beings to grow continually taller and wiser in an
indefinite progress towards perfection; and this generalisation would be just
as well founded as the generalisation which evolutionists base upon the
previous history of this planet.[15]
Nor was Bertrand Russell an atheist in the pure sense of the word as many would have us believe.
As a
philosopher, if I were speaking to a purely philosophic audience I should say
that I ought to describe myself as an Agnostic, because I do not think that
there is a conclusive argument by which one can prove that there is not a God.
On the other hand, if I am to convey the right impression to the ordinary man
in the street I think that I ought to say that I am an Atheist, because, when I
say that I cannot prove that there is not a God, I ought to add equally that I
cannot prove that there are not the Homeric gods.[16]
In other words, Russell’s problem was not so much that he had an argument against the existence of God, but that there was so much evil and suffering in the world that one would be hard pressed to argue that God was good. However, because God cannot be held responsible for humanity’s freely chosen acts of evil and cruelty, the neo-Darwinists/humanists’ arguments against God reduce to the assertion that this world, if God created it, should be a physical paradise. In other words, at least his part of the situation should be perfect. As a matter of pure logic, however, the paradise that humanists so often criticize God for not producing in the first instance can only be truly achieved after judgment, or at least only be maintained after judgment because of unavoidable spiritual factors. The perfection of Eden could not be maintained, not because of God’s failure, but because of man’s failures. Therefore, judgment itself must await a period of opportunity for the expression of free will, the opportunity either to selfishly inflict evil or to compassionately oppose suffering. Only after this has occurred can evil be separated from the good once and for all. In effect, God has, in the creation of this imperfect world given us “enough rope to hang ourselves,” or, alternatively, to pull ourselves back into the boat.
A world such as the neo-Darwinists insist God should have made allows no suffering. It therefore permits neither real-time remedial punishment nor pure justice. Such a world provides no impetus for self-centered persons to turn to God for salvation and rebirth. A world that does not allow accidental, that is, undeserved, suffering does not allow for soul-purifying and redemptive compassion and charity in those who respond to the suffering of others. It thus provides no grounds to perfect and advance our souls to a state where we can be trusted with paradise once we are given it.
As long as humans are spiritually imperfect, a contradiction will always result from seeking paradise on earth: an otherwise perfect world will never be paradise as long as there are imperfect beings in it. In the world favored by Russell and the humanists, one perfect from the outset, a view often reflected in neo-Darwinian arguments, final judgment, and thus the final resolution to the problem of evil, would be precluded because there would be no basis upon which to enact judgment. No evil could be done; no good could be added to the perfection already present. The evil ones would be forever blessed with a paradise to live in (one they did not deserve). As you can no doubt see, this is an impossible scenario. Given free will, the evil ones would quickly ruin paradise. Minus the disincentive of real-time punishment they would have the opportunity to go on imposing evil victimization upon the innocent ad infinitum. Thus the neo-Darwinist/atheist/humanist position embodies an enormous contradiction, it doesn’t promote paradise, it precludes it.
Far from being the noble flagship of morality that neo-Darwinism/humanism claims to be, neo-Darwinism/humanism entails a world where evil is not only permitted, but vastly rewarded. The only means to philosophically justify such a view is to remove from man the capacity for free will and diminish him to the status of a robot. One needn’t punish a robot, but merely reprogram it. While this may in fact be the view of man that many neo-Darwinists and humanists hold, it does not suffice as an argument against God. It makes God out to be stingy with his children and therefore less good or less capable than the definition of an all-powerful God requires. It replaces man's destiny of ascent to a divine realm in glorified form only a little lower than the angels with that of a robot. It deprives God of the ability to institute justice and morality on Earth. This result, being far less than optimally good, is not permitted by the very same argument the neo-Darwinists/humanists make against God: if it is not perfect, God did not do it. Thus a contradiction is invoked by the Darwinian argument that, if God would have created the world it would be physically perfect at the outset. This kind of pre-judgment world precludes spiritual growth, justice, free will, and a higher destiny for man. Contrary to the Darwinist's arrogant claims for their much publicized argument against God, the fact of the matter is that a fully good and fully powerful God could not have done it their way.
While not yet dodging this logical contradiction, neo-Darwinists/humanists have at times countered by asserting that we humans simply are robots. One cannot overstate the dangers of this view for human society. They are of the gravest kind. As the great theologian C. S. Lewis (Chronicles of Narnia) made graphically clear in That Hideous Strength, the final book of his other classic series of novels, referred to as the "Ransom Trilogy," or the "Space Trilogy," such a view pulls all moral grounding from the criminal justice system. You can’t hold a robot morally accountable for preprogrammed behavior. This view opens the door to totalitarian governments implementing behavioral conditioning programs for humans, and for the blatant disregard for all human rights. Robots have no inalienable rights.
In the neo-Darwinist/humanist view, what is good is merely what works best for society, and who is to say what ‘best’ is except those holding power at the time? And who is likely to rise to power in a system that does not suppress criminal behavior? Unscrupulous criminals, of course. C. S. Lewis’ novel, and the two that precede it in the series make this argument against the neo-Darwinian philosophy more strongly than analytical logic can ever do, as does Ayn Rand’s classic novel, Atlas Shrugged. In both of these great achievements of literature one is shown the inevitable progression of the neo-Darwinian philosophy. The reader watches it unfold step by abhorrent step into a society that never questions but simply believes what they are told by “scientific experts” until…a horror story results repugnant beyond all human conception. Both novels must be read to achieve a full appreciation of the dangers inherent in the neo-Darwinian view. This is why Christians should object to the teaching, not of basic evolution, but of neo-Darwinian evolution in our classrooms, for as Cardinal Archbishop Schönborn has pointed out, neo-Darwinian evolution is political ideology, not science at all, and as Pope John Paul II warned, such theories remove all foundation for the dignity of the human person.
Which Theory of Evolution?
Discussions of “Darwinian theory” and “neo-Darwinian theory” in day to day use do not define the terms with precision. Before, between, and following the two attempts at an evolutionary synthesis made in the twentieth century, what general definition we have for neo-Darwinian theory has been permitted to simply evolve and fluctuate in a de facto manner as a horde of evolutionists went about doing the business of evolutionary science. There is one important milestone to aid navigation in our inquiry concerning accidental versus purposive evolution—just one—and it is often obscured or ignored in modern evolutionary texts. That is the event of famous modern evolutionist George Gaylord Simpson following Sir Julian Huxley in affirming undeniable purpose in the evolutionary process. For Simpson this was not necessarily divine purpose, but an unspecified form of purpose, the origin of which Simpson considered to be beyond science’s ability to address.
Simpson informs us that the first of the two primary attempts at an evolutionary synthesis spontaneously occurred over the course of a vaguely described generation (1940-1960ish) via the combined work of many scientists across a wide range of specialties. This synthesis addressed the accidental component of evolutionary theory by way of removing the assumption of an accidental process from the new Synthetic Theory, leaving it with the antecedent and overly simplistic Neo-Darwinian Theory.[17] Neo-Darwinian Theory and Synthetic Theory remain the two primary versions of evolutionary theory affirmed by mainstream science today. (I am ignoring for the moment recent major subtheories such as punctuated equilibrium and random drift.) Simpson’s important distinction concerning purpose was, of course, immediately ignored and buried in subsequent writings by neo-Darwinian evolutionists. The precedent they established of ignoring Simpson’s distinction seems to have then become the norm among evolutionary writers in general. In the world today, the laity typically follows suit in endorsing this confusion, tending to speak merely of “evolution.” Unfortunately, neo-Darwinists, and occasionally other evolutionists, who know better, also ignore the distinction except for the rare occasion where it serves their political purpose.
Another confusion, one more subtle and perhaps more dangerous, occurs when basic evolution, which is merely descent with modification from common ancestors, is confused with accidental evolution. Although basic evolution is a component of both Synthetic Theory and neo-Darwinian theory it does not embrace all that either of these larger theories assert, being in fact neutral on the question of purpose/accident. Confusing basic evolution with accidental evolution (the neo-Darwinian form) allows the genuine evidence for basic evolution to improperly accrue to the support of accidental evolution. The myth that all evolutionary theory affirms lack of purpose, materialism and an accidental process has thus become a staple in the intellectual diet of a large segment of the public. It is the correction of this erroneous view of the world, the reintroduction of the valid distinction between purposive and nonpurposive theories, and the final refutation of the ridiculous theory/myth of “accidental” evolution that is the purpose of this book.
Close scrutiny of the scientific data reveals that, not only has cosmic purpose/intelligent design not been ruled out by science, but that science does not yet even have a fully defensible theory of evolution minus the intelligent design hypothesis. This is because none of the versions of evolutionary theory so far proposed have a coherent explanation of the origin of biological information—and this is the hard part of the explanation of the complex designs of life.[18] No satisfactory explanation can be given of the origin of the astronomically complex information intensive systems in and around the genomes that drive the design, construction and regulation of living things. In fact, the origins of none of the ultra complex systems of life, especially the genomes, the genetic translation systems, and the brain, to date have a scientific explanation outside of the intelligent design hypothesis. (Nor, for that matter, do the moderately complex systems have a satisfactory explanation.)
The Case for Intelligent
Design
The evidence for purpose in evolution is, thankfully, less ambiguous than the experts who have been tasked to interpret it. The scientific evidence now firmly points to predominantly non-random processes at the heart of the origin and evolution of life, processes fine-tuned for life. Dr. Stephen C. Meyer, Director of Discovery Institute’s Center for Science and Culture in Seattle, has presented a comprehensive case against accidental processes having originated life and the sophisticated biological information in higher life forms. His case is published in a recent groundbreaking article (and one surrounded, of course, by political controversy) entitled “The Origin of Biological Information and the Higher Taxonomic Categories.”[19] Citing a plethora of peer reviewed scientific studies, Meyer presents straightforward arguments that establish a magnitude of improbability for classic neo-Darwinian evolution that science can no longer ignore. He convincingly argues that the enormous amount of genetic and other biological information needed to evolve all the major life forms could not have been generated by chance mutations or accidental processes alone.
Professor Michael Behe’s irreducible complexity thesis, presented in his landmark book, Darwin’s Black Box, and the excellent follow-on Edge of Evolution,[20] goes far, particularly in conjunction with Meyer’s work and William Dembski’s probability analysis (given in The Design Inference, No Free Lunch, and The Design Revolution), towards presenting a case for nothing less than the physical impossibility of neo-Darwinian (accidental) evolution. Dembski’s work, especially, makes clear that an accidental evolutionary process could not have occurred within the time and physical resources available in the history of the universe.[21]
To the layman, the most immediately visible problem with neo-Darwinian theory is mirrored in Michael Behe’s irreducible complexity objection. Cells and other biological machines are simply too intricate, too complex, and too delicate to have been formed by accident. Neither can they be accidentally modified without harm because each component is critical to function. Prior to achieving any substantial (progressive) functional change an accidental process will inevitably break the machine.
The gradual accidental change so central to classic neo-Darwinian theory is shown to be impossible because all of the parts of many intricate biological machines have to be in place at the same time for the system to function. Professor John A. Davison, Professor Emeritus of Biology at the University of Vermont, says that the very notion of a gradual genetic evolutionary change is meaningless and that gradual change requiring millions of years to observe makes the neo-Darwinian theory untestable (and therefore not scientific).
Both Behe's and Davison's theses now seem largely confirmed by both the fossil record and genetic research. Genetic studies reveal that significant new biological features require whole sets of genes to be altered in a closely synchronized way, and the fossil record shows that evolution proceeded primarily via a series of large rapid jumps (punctuated equilibrium). Sir Fred Hoyle also reminds us that the fossil lineages of the different orders of creatures neither lead to a definite common ancestor nor fully link up to each other as the classic gradual evolutionary model of accidental evolution requires.[22]
Most laymen would agree with Behe that irreducibly complex machines simply are a “sign of intelligence,” that biological machines are evidence of design. Common sense remains the hallmark of intelligence even in the 21st Century, though at times one might hardly know it. If there is a designer of life, shouldn’t we expect that natural systems would give some discernable indication of the one absolute greatest influence on those systems, that of their designer—some signs of intelligent authorship. Signs of intelligence are exactly what have been recently discovered in biochemistry, microbiology and genetics. These signs are nonrandom and sufficiently complex that if the equivalent were translated into graphic patterns, natural language, computer language or mathematics they would be acknowledged as originating in an intelligent source.
Such signs of intelligence are profuse in the structures of living things and clearly manifest throughout the horrendously complex biochemical event of life’s evolution. The improbability that any one significant feature of biological design could be achieved by accident is sufficiently staggering to imply intelligent design. The aggregate improbability of achieving all of them as manifested in the varied life forms of 100,000,000 species, with biological machines hierarchically embedded within larger machines to 10 levels deep, as famed evolutionist G. G. Simpson conceded, simply forbids belief in an accidental process.[23] There is, undeniably, purpose in nature. Let us move on then to the concrete scientific data and see just how far it supports or refutes the ridiculous myth of the accidental origin and evolution of life.
As a result of recent research, the effects of accidental or random tinkering on basic biological machines is no longer an unknown. Proteins, specifically, have been scrutinized with scientific rigor. Dr. Stephen Meyer’s synopsis of the work of D. D. Axe gives us the embarkation point for a review of intelligent design theory’s probability argument against the accidental origin of the tree of life. According to Dr. Meyer, who cites peer-reviewed research, the probability of getting even the most rudimentary biologically viable protein (just one) by chance from nonliving sources is no more than 1 chance in 10125.[24] If your math is rusty, that is a 1 followed by 125 zeroes!
To construct a living cell, a hundred complex proteins are required at a minimum (most involve thousands). They must interact in intricate ways with several hundred other cell components, each cell performing over two million actions per minute. The improbability of accidentally generating a living cell from nonliving chemicals is therefore thousands of times more difficult than generating a single protein. I will conservatively estimate it at 1 chance in 10128.
The effort Dr. Meyer has made to exercise conservative rigor in his estimate can be seen in comparing his work to other estimates that have been offered for the probability of accidentally accomplishing this first step of life. As Dean Overman informs us in his excellent book, A Case Against Accident and Self-Organization, they range from fully trillions of times larger improbabilities to even greater super-immense improbabilities like 10-10(110).[25] My own estimates here are underestimates based upon known information and logic. As indisputable underestimates, they conserve the rigor of Meyer’s basic values, from which they are derived, and do not jump so far so fast as to escape the nontechnical reader. Meyer’s numbers are themselves primarily derived from the recent protein synthesis studies of D. D. Axe.[26]
One way to see how far I have underestimated the difficulty of this first step is to read Russell Grigg’s brilliant paper on the problem of accidental creation of life, which includes among its many cogent arguments a discussion of the reversible reactions inherent in protein synthesis in water. Grigg explains that in evolutionary theory the first proteins are believed to have been formed in solution in earth’s oceans. Spontaneously generated amino acids are assumed to have been mixed randomly until they accidentally formed some useful combinations, that is, functional proteins. However, proteins break down in water. Water dissolves the bonds between the amino acids and returns them back into solution. The lifespan of most proteins accidentally hit upon in this way would therefore be so short as to preclude anything useful being done with them. They would not exist long enough to permit their assemblage into complex biological structures.
The way evolutionists rescue the process from reversibility is by assuming a long, varied and somewhat turbulent shoreline where accidentally constructed proteins are immediately washed ashore onto a hospitable moist clay substrata that stays just moist enough to hold the proteins in place but not so moist as to dissolve them again, and where the waves that brought the proteins ashore don’t immediately wash them away. Thus, although the reversibility of protein synthesis in solution does not make the accidental achievement of some proteins fully impossible, it does greatly increase the difficulty and improbability of accumulating the complete set of proteins needed for the first organism.[27]
To achieve a protein, of course, is not to achieve life. Far from it. The accidental production of the first single celled creature from non-living chemicals needed to get the evolutionary ball rolling remains an enormous obstacle for neo-Darwinian theory—one that has not been scientifically resolved. As we shall see, there are many other equally difficult steps along the way to generating the higher life forms. Some are arguably much more difficult than originating the first single-celled organism. Therefore, even to achieve a bacterium by accident is not to prove accidental evolution of much more complex life forms. Taken all together the requisite steps to greater and greater design complexity needed to generate the tree of life increase the improbability of an accidental process far beyond the threshold of rational and scientific credibility.
Step 2: Proteins for 100,000,000 Highly Varied Species[28]
Many new proteins will have to be generated and integrated into new systems or organs for each step up the evolutionary ladder. The problem of reversible reaction eliminates much of the useful protein production from the external environment, as does the fact that, once bacteria were present they would rapidly consume or biodegrade any accidentally produced proteins and other biotic components. This leaves us with internal generation of new proteins from living organisms as the primary source for evolutionary progress. Dr. Meyer estimates that the odds of getting a single new biologically viable standard sized protein from random genetic mutation of an existing organism are roughly 1077 to 1 against.[29]
A full inventory of all animal proteins has not been completed—or of all animals for that matter. However, the human body alone is estimated to use, at a minimum, 85,000 different proteins.[30] Total estimates for living creatures range to the hundreds of thousands. I am going to set the probability value for evolutionary protein generation conservatively at a clear minimum of 1 chance in 85,000 X 1077. To show how conservative my estimate is, physicist Paul Davies estimates this much higher (and more accurately) at 1040,000.[31]
If we were to theoretically assume true randomness, as an accidental worldview would suggest, the probabilities of generating each different protein of the full compliment of 85,000 would have to be multiplied, that is, 10-77 times 10-77 85,000 times over, for a super immense improbability of 1 chance in 106,545,000!
These are the proper computations required by standard probability theory for achievement of random events in sequence. The probability of rolling three 6s in sequence using standard gaming dice, for example, is not computed by adding the difficulty level of rolling any one of them to that of the others, which would yield 1 chance in 18. Rather, it requires multiplication, yielding only 1 chance in 216. This is because there are 216 alternative configurations for a three die set. Compare this to the computations Fazale Rana and Hugh Ross have made in Table 12.2 of their fascinating book, Origins of Life.[32] Here the odds of achieving the 1,500 gene minimum requisite to independent life is given as 10-112,500, which is Hubert Yockey’s estimate of the odds for random production of the common protein cytochrome C, 10-75, multiplied by itself 1,500 times.[33]
I am therefore beginning the refutation of accidental evolution with one hand intentionally tied behind my back. I have already given away 6,544,920 orders of magnitude of improbability just to prove a point: accidental evolution still couldn’t happen. My ultraconservative underestimate of the synthesis of a complete set of proteins for the tree of life is done for two reasons. First, visibility lends credibility. If one cannot mentally track the derivation of a value one cannot hold full confidence in it. I want the nontechnical reader to be able to see why each step we make is legitimate, that is, why it makes sense, in order to have greater confidence in the final conclusion that accidental evolution simply could not have occurred. Second, I am afraid working with super immense numbers will simply scare some readers away; therefore, I will simplify wherever possible. The occasional basic math sequence that does occur involving big numbers can be skipped over as desired or scanned without loss of meaning. Still, only basic multiplication and addition is used in this book, no calculus, no trigonometry and no funny symbols. Most of the math argument has been moved to Appendix 2 where it is demonstrated beyond doubt that there are insufficient resources in the universe to ground an accidental evolutionary process. Even there only basic math is used. Give it a try; it is quite easy.
Already in the first two steps of life’s construction we see indications of design by way of incremental increases in the bias for life. The improbability of generating the complete inventory of human proteins (the improbability of each multiplied by the other) has been reduced by as much as 4,080,000 orders of magnitude[34] simply by moving the process of protein construction from outside a living creature to inside. That is the difference between 85,000 multiplications of 1077 (biologically viable protein production inside an organism) and 85,000 multiplications of 10125 (biologically viable protein production outside an organism).
Proteins can be as large as 10,000 amino acid residues, with approximately 100 amino acids linked in an average protein. The enormous complexity of creating a precisely folded three dimensional protein structure of typically from 50 to 300 amino acids, each amino acid with many functionally relevant properties of its own, is one thing (between them the 20 biologically useful amino acids have 437 properties relevant to determining function).[35] However, the full complexity of protein interactions in the cell, termed “systems proteomics” by Gabriel Waksman, is so complex that even our most state of the art computer simulations cannot represent it without employing shortcuts and simplifying assumptions.[36]
As Waksman’s book, Proteomics and Protein-Protein Interactions, and the new volume, Protein Folding: New Research, edited by Tony R. Obalinsky, make abundantly clear, we know a lot about proteins, but only a fraction of what there is to know. Protein science is still in its infancy. The added complexity that will be revealed is certain to be immense. Even the electromagnetic properties of amino acids are involved in protein folding. The exact nature of the fold is what imparts viable biological function to proteins. The full determinants of protein folding characteristics of amino acids are traceable down to the atomic level![37]
Step 3: Constructing
Cellular Machines--The Astounding Complexity of the Cell
Extreme biological complexity, which most of us have become familiar with, at least in part, at the genetic level, is mirrored in visibly intricate molecular processes.[38] Acclaimed science writer, Boyce Rensberger (The Washington Post) gives a masterful account of some of the truly amazing things cells can do in his 1996 page turner, Life Itself. Here we learn that “cells have the biological equivalent of a containerized cargo system.”[39] In Darwin’s Black Box, Professor Michael Behe presents examples of a handful of other biological systems that have been currently described by science to such an extent that we can confidently analyze them. Within these closely studied systems every component has been found not only to be essential to its function but very closely matched to each other in design. Behe calls these systems “irreducibly complex” because they can’t be reduced by even one component without destroying the function of the design. These systems are also too complex to permit accidental assemblage of the design one piece at a time. Behe’s thesis is that irreducible complexity is typical of living systems, not the exception (though not necessarily universal for all subsystems), and that cells, the building blocks of all life, are irreducibly complex. Michael Denton claimed very much the same thing in his book, Evolution: A Theory in Crisis, [40] in 1986, minus much of the molecular detail Behe provides.
With irreducibly complex designs, random changes (accidents) of a magnitude sufficient to produce a functional variation so seriously impair existing functions that the cell does not survive to pass on the change to future generations, or it is so seriously degraded that natural selection soon removes the mutated cell line from the evolutionary tree. Nor does destruction of a mutated cell result in its being reduced to smaller survivable functional units that can then reform in novel ways to support evolution as some have claimed because, as elementary biology texts have always proclaimed, cells are the smallest survivable units.
Beyond the complexity of proteins and the DNA code itself is the actual day-to-day operation of the cell, which involves a myriad of complex machines. Professor Scott Minnich of the University of Idaho says the assembly instructions for cellular machines are even more complex than the protein coding instructions contained in DNA.[41]
The ribosome is one such machine, a critical organelle that manages the protein assembly process. To construct a ribosome, in addition to the basic protein composition of its two part structure (20-21 proteins, and 31-35 proteins for the respective parts), several copies of ribosomal RNA must be created and added to the structure. In neo-Darwinian theory, the RNA coding sequence must first be achieved by accident. That accident must precisely configure 1500 base pairs of nucleotides for the small unit and 3,000 for the large unit. It must also assemble 50 or more structural proteins into two functional subunits. To get a better idea of just how complex even these deceptively simple miniscule protein tunnels are known to be, see Kathleen L. Triman's article, "Mutational Analysis of the Ribosome." Note particularly the bibliography, and the text she recommends by Liljas, Structural Aspects of Protein Synthesis.[42] What seems so simple on the surface turns out to be enormously complex.
Because the rarity of functional proteins implies the corresponding rarity of the genes that code for them in the vast ocean of possible DNA sequences, the frequency of useful randomly configured genes can be estimated at about the same magnitude as useful randomly generated proteins: 1 in every 1077.[43] Since genes perform complex regulatory functions in addition to directing protein synthesis the probability of randomly hitting upon a useful gene is actually much smaller than for achieving a single protein. The probability of accidentally creating only the smaller portion of ribosomal DNA, representing a sequence of 1500 base pairs, can then be estimated to be at least the improbability of one functional protein.[44]
Another biological machine is the cellulosome. The cellulosome is a two-component machine composed of a dockerin sequence and a cohesion module, used by bacteria to degrade polysaccharides on the cell walls of plants. The dockerin sequence is composed of approximately 70 amino acid residues, while the cohesion module requires around 150 residues. The genetic information required to create a cellulosome is approximately 6,000,000 base pairs.[45] Again the 6,000,000 long nucleotide sequence must be configured by accident under neo-Darwinian theory. Accidentally achieving the functional DNA of a cellulosome, at 6,000,000 base pairs, equates to making roughly 6,000 proteins, yielding an intentionally underestimated probability of 6,000 X 10-77, or 6 X 10-80. (Again, more strictly done, this should be 10-77 multiplied by itself 6,000 times, which is 10-462,000!)
There are plenty of other machines involved in life. The famed biological clock, for example, perhaps thought by some (young persons) to be mythical, turns out to be quite real, and quite complex. The circadian clock is found in all complex creatures and some bacteria. It has been studied for 50 years and all of its mysteries and mechanics are still not fully understood. In a creature as simple as the fungus it involves 11 proteins and a very complex system of interactions with many auxiliary components. Christian Heintzen and Yi Liu describe the circadian clock in amazing technical detail in a fascinating article, "The Neurospora crassa Circadian Clock," revealing feedback loops and a variety of regulatory actions, data input and output channels etc. These clearly mark the clock as an intricately designed machine. (Heintzen and Liu neither advance nor deny the inference to intelligent design; they simply describe the clock.) There are a variety of clock functions in humans and other creatures as a fascinating online article by Loes Pihlajamaa-Glimmerveen describes at http://www.glimmerveen.nl/LE/biological_clock.html.
A fourth biological machine that has gotten a lot of attention is the bacterial flagellum. Professor Michael Behe describes this intricate machine in Darwin’s Black Box. To get a more detailed view of the complexity of the flagellum ion powered motor, see Robert M. Macnab’s Annual Review of Microbiology article entitled “How Bacteria Assemble Flagella.”[46] The bottom line is that these are complex machines with very closely matched parts. They are, in fact, outboard motors, having rotor, bushing, and bearings, very intricately powered and controlled by miniscule electronic impulses. (See Access Research Network’s animations of the flagellum here and here.)
The Tip of the Iceberg
There are thousands of other biological machines that must be constructed accidentally under neo-Darwinian theory. The complexity of some, like the human brain, simply defy description. The complexity of even the most basic biological machines clearly signals the larger difficulty of the evolutionary task. Some simple organisms have thousands of ribosomes in one cell (the bacterium E. coli has 15,000).[47] Nor do we know absolutely everything regarding their construction. Substantial questions remain unanswered, and current research reveals the construction process for even simple machines like the ribosome to be enormously complex.[48]
Uniquely Complex Systems
The complexity of the immune system alone practically defies description. The adaptive immune system can recognize approximately a trillion threats, and can construct defenses against man-made antigens that are not yet known to nature. Professor Michael Behe gives us a fascinating glimpse of the hidden workings of the immune system in Chapter 6 of Darwin’s Black Box, Boyce Rensberger expands that in a fascinating account in Chapter 11 of Life Itself, and the rest of the story is beautifully laid out in the new textbook The Immune Response, by Tak W. Mak and Mary E. Saunders, a glorious work of 1194 pages. [49]
As impressive as the human immune system is, our central nervous system far exceeds it in complexity, performing operations of much greater sophistication. There are 100 billion neurons in the human brain and spinal cord that make up the central nervous system, each with thousands of connecting fibers.[50] In his recent article, “Duplicating Human Intelligence is a Mirage,” computer scientist Peter Kassan informs us that a program mimicking human intelligence would have to be 25 million times the size of the largest computer software program ever written. The glial cells in the brain were long thought to be only structural, but Kassan reveals that in 2004 researchers discovered they had other functions as well. There are nine times as many glial cells as neurons.[51] Entire areas of functionality in human intelligence, emotion, and the capacity for abstract thought continue to defy the reductionist analysis of science. They imply astronomical complexity beyond our current ability to estimate, and beyond our computers’ ability to model.[52] Obviously, we cannot restrict our estimate of biological complexity to genes and proteins alone.
The Cambrian Explosion
Reduces the Time Available
During the Cambrian Period, which began some 530 to 570 million years ago, the vast majority of the animal body plans that have ever existed evolved within only five to ten million years.[53] In other words the bulk of the evolutionary task does not have the full lifespan of the earth (4.45 billion years) available for its completion. These basic forms gave rise to at least nineteen and as many as thirty-five of the forty different animal phyla we have today.[54] Having practically all the animal body forms evolve in only ten million years as opposed to the 4.45 billion years of the earth’s total existence dramatically increases the odds against it happening by chance.
Interruptions to Evolutionary Progress
There have been at least seven major disruptive events, ice ages or mass extinctions that would have cost evolution a significant amount of time. These catastrophes would almost certainly have vetoed many significant inputs of natural selection, removing thousands of previously favored species, at times compelling a near full restart on an entire branch of the tree of life. Ninety-six percent of marine animals were lost during an extinction occuring toward the end of the Permian period.[55] Major extinction events occurred within the last eighty million years, extending all the way up to the last ice age less than two million years ago. A large portion of evolutionary development was certainly lost in these catastrophes. The lost progress further increases the workload and derivative improbability of an accidental evolutionary process.
The presence of substantial, even near perfect symmetry, is a hallmark feature of living things. Symmetry is easy to achieve because the biological information that directs it need merely be placed at a very early point in the embryonic construction process. The code simply says that whatever is done for the left of the torso segment should also be done for the right, or for the top the same as the bottom, etc.[56] Symmetry is a striking characteristic of most biological machine designs, and, in my view, something randomness is incapable of producing with consistency initially, that is, prior to natural selection's preferring the symmetrical performance profile on the battlefield of life. Swimming creatures clearly would eventually move to symmetry for efficiency of movement, but they need not have begun that way in an accidental process. Where are the fossils of the failed attempts at asymmetrical design? Granted, they would rarely, if ever, be competitive, but an accidental process even given natural selection would not know this at the outset. Given the neo-Darwinian assumption of an accidental process, there should be a substantial record of asymmetry in the fossil record. The percentage of initial proposals that seem to have worked well in regards to where to have or not to have symmetry is exorbitantly high for an accidental process, well outside standard probability distributions.
Do not be misled by the natural tendency to symmetry in chemistry. This is required by the very rigid and precisely defined laws of atomic structure that govern the way atoms and molecules bond to each other.[57] Nor is there is anything accidental about atomic and molecular construction. The same natural laws that govern chemistry do not constrain random mutations of DNA to a symmetrical result, however. Any of the four possible values of a DNA nucleotide, C,G,T or A are equally acceptable to the chemical bonding requirements of the “backbone” of the DNA strand. They will all snap into place with equal ease. However, only a very few nucleotide sequence combinations will preserve symmetry of bodily form, while many millions will radically disrupt it.
Symmetry in body form is useful for balance, stability, agility, grasping with counter pressure, efficient swimming, flying etc. Clearly, natural selection would preserve symmetry in these applications, once achieved. But why did an accidental process so unanimously and quickly hit upon symmetry in all the right places throughout all of evolutionary history without first creating imbalanced designs that were temporarily survivable but not optimized? Why didn't symmetry first appear in the wrong places in addition to the optimal ones? The answer it simple, and there is only one alternative that can explain the evidence: evolution is visibly a "smart" process; it is not accidental at all.
Art in nature perhaps reaches its peak in tropical birds, tropical fish and flowers. The argument for design from these glorious works of art is simple. Although a randomized system could achieve variations of color and pattern much more easily than functional change inside the organism, we just know art when we see it. Scribbling and junk design can be consistently identified and distinguished from good human art and when we are shown these magnificent colorful designs in living creatures they “blow away” most of the human competition. They are gloriously fine art and we know it. If one has any doubt, nature books and films like Richard Attenborough’s magnificent video, Life on Earth,[58] will dispel them. Look at the field guides to the tropical birds and flowers in the nature area of your bookstore, or better yet, buy a good pair of binoculars and get into the field. Functional advantage may explain some instances of color variation, but not all of them.
Total Body Complexity of
Hierarchical Systems
Genetic information is not the only kind of complex
information in living creatures. In humans, complex interactions of trillions
of cells have to be organized and regulated to ensure the proper function of
systems, organs and tissues. The entire body plan of the organism must somehow
make all these components work together to provide integrated body-wide
functions.[59]
The probability of accidentally hitting upon hierarchically integrated designs
of this complexity exceeds our estimate for protein synthesis and gene
regulation by additional orders of magnitude.[60]
Simultaneous Development
of Complimentary Traits
An additional problem for neo-Darwinian evolution is the improbability of accidentally generating a set of features that must work together, features that would individually convey no obvious advantage. The set of characteristics in birds comes to mind: acute long distance vision, wings, a lightweight frame, rapid flight capable reflexes, and feathers. At a minimum these features would have had to appear in the right order, otherwise they would pose an explicit vulnerability to the organism. For example, moving to such a fragile frame would be a decided disadvantage if the bird could not first get off the ground to escape predators. It would need strength and weight to stand and fight and a rugged durable frame to withstand the occasional injury from combat. Agile flight at high speed would be accident prone without the improved vision and fast reflexes etc.
Despite the fact that traditional discussions have dispensed with this objection by citing imaginary routes to evolving a related set of complementary traits,[61] achievement of those complex imaginary routes via accidental processes does add substantial improbability and additional time requirements to the neo-Darwinian process. An accidental process is not likely to manage such a complex transition efficiently on the first attempt. Additional tries at transition are required, which consume more time and resources. A transition procedure that is not sequenced exactly right is going to fail due to making the creature temporarily vulnerable and noncompetitive. To avoid quickly losing the prototype organism's new gene line (and the evolutionary progress it carries) to extinction, a highly improbable path, one more near to the perfect route of transition must be taken. An accidental process could not conceivably have achieved such a phenomenal string of successes of this kind as shown in the historical record of evolution.
Convergence: Achieving the Same Design by Independent Routes
Simon Conway Morris, a popular modern evolutionary writer, is Professor of Evolutionary Paleobiology at Cambridge University. His book, Life’s Solution: Inevitable Humans in a Lonely Universe, gives a fascinating account of the many and varied cases of convergence in evolution.[62] For example, the camera type eye common to humans and the octopus has evolved separately in at least six different creatures. Other features that have evolved independently in multiple instances include olfaction (smell), hearing, the trachea, myoglobin, anti-freezing mechanisms, photosynthesis, social organization, and quite a few others, almost certainly to include hemoglobin and even intelligence. Morris goes so far as to say that convergence is practically ubiquitous in nature.
Neo-Darwinists may try to dismiss convergence-based objections to their theory because arriving at the same biological design solution by multiple independent routes, even thousands of times, does not rule out inheritance for the vast majority of other cases. That much is true, and convergent achievements would typically show more variation in genetic sequence than an inherited trait. But convergence does add additional improbability to the accidental thesis, which would have difficulty consistently proposing the same complex design solution over and over again through independent routes. Granted, natural selection could lock in a good proposal once offered, but how does an accidental process manage to generate a hugely complex design proposal again and again in nearly identical fashion? A bias in the systems of nature for the repeated design solution is indicated.
If instances of convergence are in fact to be found practically everywhere in nature, and Morris makes a good case, the increase in workload and improbability for an accidental evolutionary process to reaccomplish complex designs in thousands of instances as opposed to reusing a previous design achievement is quite significant. This would require an enormous rate of mutation. Although convergence does not disprove inheritance, it adds significant obstacles of increased time, resources and improbability to an accidental evolutionary process.[63]
Non-genetic Control Structures and Species Determination
Dr. Jonathan Wells reports that scientists have discovered developmental control factors that act independently of DNA: microtubule arrays in animal cell membranes and, particularly relevant to our purpose here, in the cell membrane structures of egg cells.[64] These are three dimensional control structures, a sort of patterned network of plumbing for cell product distribution and cell component assembly. Much like Willy Wanka’s chocolate factory, if you put the right ingredients in at the front, a specific well-defined result comes out the other end.
According to Wells, recent research in developmental biology reveals that DNA does not control species determination in animals, at least not directly: the microtubule arrays in egg cell membranes control species determination. Placing the DNA of species ‘A’ into the egg of species ‘B’ does not change the species from that of the ‘B’ egg to species ‘A’, and the result will not likely survive due to its being supplied with improper protein production from the foreign DNA. Scientists have observed varied instances of non-genetic factors of this kind since 1964.[65]
Given this revelation, an accidental evolutionary process must closely coordinate physical mutations of cell membrane control structures with corresponding random DNA mutations for protein synthesis and regulatory functions. This complication greatly slows the evolutionary process to await such an unlikely coincidence. Even allowing that DNA in some sense is the ultimate source of the microtubule patterns, changes to the areas of the genome that specify these microtubule patterns constitute an additional factor that has to be coordinated in real time to achieve even a survivable form change, let alone a competitive advantage.
Other form determining factors have to be taken into
account in the evolutionary process as well, such as DNA methylation and other
kinds of gene activation marker systems. Gene activation markers can at times
effect morphological change in organisms stable enough to be passed on to the
next generation. Such factors complicate random management of the evolutionary
process further by adding additional variables that must be synchronized in
real time to ensure a viable result.
The Genome & Genetic
Machinery
The genetic machinery itself is the paradigm of biological complexity. We have yet to fully understand and describe the workings of the genome, though there are already volumes of description on file. Dr. Robert Pollack, in his excellent and gracefully aging primer on genetics, Signs of Life, explains that the process of translating genetic information into functioning bodily systems is extremely complex, going well beyond the task of simple protein production and assembly.[66] A myriad of various and subtle contexts within bodily systems, many yet to be fully scrutinized by science, alter the way a given gene will finally be expressed.
But one might object, “Haven’t we mapped the genomes?” Yes, we have mapped a few of them. But it is important to note that mapping a genome is not the same thing as describing its functions. Basic mapping does not even cross reference a gene to the function or feature it governs, it only records the nucleotide sequences and gives a preliminary identification of gene locations in the chromosome. Mapping is merely a list of the sequence of nucleotides. It does not explain the complex machinery involved in translation, transposition, error correction, repair and duplication, protein synthesis and biological systems regulation. Therefore, the mere fact that we have “mapped” the genomes of a few creatures does not mean that we have fully described or understood their functions.
I