If You Believe in Evolution,
Then You Believe . . .
Accidents and Random Chance
- If you believe in evolution, you believe that all of life occurred through random genetic mistakes and dying plants and animals.
Evolution teaches that random beneficial mutations improve an organism's chances of survival. These random mutations are supposed to perpetuate the mutated organism and eventually create a new species.
Purely accidental and random beneficial mutations are supposed to have produced all plants and animals on earth. And natural selection is supposed to have resulted in the death of the weak and left the world to the strong. That is all that evolution is. Chance creates, death destroys and the line of descent that is better suited survives, reproduce and passes on the mutated genes. According to evolution, random mutation is the sole mechanism for the creation of the strong and the survival of the fittest is the sole mechanism for the elimination of the weak.
DNA
- If you believe in evolution, you believe that a series of perhaps millions of random beneficial mutations devised a language to describe the formulas for approximately 20,000 complex human proteins and inscribe them upon a molecule (the DNA molecule). This process consumed approximately three billion letters.
It has been said that the DNA molecule is equivalent to inscribing the Encyclopedia Britannica upon a molecule. However, in actual fact, this comparison is inaccurate. It is more accurate to say that it is equivalent to inscribing 20 Encyclopedia Britannicas upon a molecule (click here to see the basis for this argument).
These 3,000,000,000 (or, arguably 6,000,000,000) letters are used to provide intricate instructions for combining particular atoms and molecules in the proper sequence to manufacture 20,000 basic human proteins which are then modified to produce approximately 100,000 different essential proteins.
The human body contains roughly 20,000 genes that are capable of producing proteins. Each gene can produce multiple forms of a protein, and these in turn can be decorated with several post-translational modifications: they can have phosphate or methyl groups attached, or be joined to lipids or carbohydrates, all of which affect their function. “The number of potential molecules you can make from one gene is huge,” says Bernhard Küster, who studies proteomics at the Technical University of Munich in Germany. “It's very hard to estimate, but I wouldn't be surprised to have in one cell type 100,000 or more different proteins.” (Quoted by Savage in Nature, 2015)
DNA is nothing but chemical formulas coded into the arrangement of atoms in a DNA molecule. They have no physical representation of the proteins that they describe. They are arrangements that carry meaning. The atoms in the arrangements are physical. The meaning is not.
If you are an evolutionist, you believe that not only the proteins, but also the instructions for the assembly of the proteins were formed by thousands of chance changes (accidents). And you believe this even though each of the 100,000 proteins performs a different function that is intricately wedded to a particular requirement of the human body.
Of course, no single protein is of any use at all by itself, but if you are a true evolutionist, that fact is of no moment to you. If you are an evolutionist, there is no infinity of impossibilities that is sufficient to convince you that anything but accidents and survival of the fittest produced an incomprehensible organization, even if it is twenty encylopedias written into the arrangements of the atoms in a molecule. In fact, even if the chances of just the proteins occurring by chance were 1 in all of the atoms of the universe (see below), an evolutionist would not believe that anything but chance and survival of the fittest produced them.
1,000,000,000,000,000 Fortunate Accidents
- If you believe in evolution, you believe that somehow 1,000,000,000,000,000 individual neurological connections that perform the functions of the human brain randomly came together through a series of accidental mutations in just the right arrangement. This translates into the accidental manufacture of a hard-wired electrical network containing approximately the same number of organized connections as there are leaves on the trees in a forest that is half the size of the United States. That is a forest that is approximately the size of Saudi Arabia, Iraq and Iran combined. Or the size of Continental Europe or twice the size of India.
"In terms of complexity, an individual cell is nothing when compared with a system like the mammalian brain. The human brain consists of about ten thousand million nerve cells. Each nerve cell puts out somewhere in the region of between ten thousand and one hundred thousand connecting fibers by which it makes contact with other nerve cells in the brain. Altogether the total number of connections in the human brain approaches 1015 or a thousand million million.
"Numbers in the order of 1015 are of course completely beyond comprehension. Imagine an area about half the size of the USA (one million square miles) covered in a forest of trees containing ten thousand trees per square mile. If each tree contained one hundred thousand leaves, the total number of leaves in the forest would be 1015, equivalent to the number of connections in the human brain!"
Evolution: A Theory in Crisis, by Michael Denton (Adler & Adler, 1985), p 330. Dr. Michael Denton is a Australian molecular biologist and medical doctor who has lived and worked in London, Toronto and Sydney and who is best known for his biological research (emphasis supplied).
That is the equivalent of trillions upon trillions of minute wires connecting all of those leaves to form an incomprehensibly complex network that produces thought. It is simply irrational to believe that this occurred through beneficial chance mutations (that have never been observed) and dying animals.
One cannot begin to explain this kind of complexity by arguing that DNA is similar in similar species, or that pelvic bones of birds look like pelvic bones of raptors or that an electric spark through a carbon liquid produces something that might be a protein.
One should not leave his common sense in the hall when he enters the biology classroom. Open your eyes and look. Think. They are teaching you that chance mutations and dying animals produced the human brain. That means that accidents and environmental stress installed one perfectly formed, in place and organized, neuro-connection each minute for two billion years -- and that is assuming no mistakes. Do the math yourself. That simply cannot have happened - no matter how much one wishes to believe it.
It is simply unreasonable to argue that this was created by happenstance and the death of inferior animals.
More about the Circuits of the Brain
Non-physical Code
- If you believe in evolution, you believe that pure chance and dying animals somehow invented a language and used it to inscribe the chemical formula for 20,000 human proteins into a molecule and that those proteins would then be modified and enhanced to produce 100,000 proteins.
Inside of the cell, you believe that random mutations produced a device that copies a precise segment of a DNA molecule for the express purpose of producing a particular protein. The segment is approximately 1/20,000th of the length of the DNA molecule. The copy bears no physical resemblance whatever to the protein molecule that it will be used to manufacture. It is nothing but pure code: pure logic. And, like the information carried by the pixels on your computer screen, the logic is separate from the arrangement of the atoms that carry the code in DNA. It is separate in the same way that a chemical formula written on 4 pages of an encyclopedia is separate from the type and the ink on the pages. The type and the ink is of little relevance. It is the logic, the meaning conveyed by the ink that carries the substance, not the ink itself. If you believe in evolution, you believe that the logic of the formulas themselves and the means of expression of those formulas (the language of DNA) simply "occurred" as a result of dying animals and environmental stress.
Inside the cell, a copy of the code that expresses the chemical formula is transferred to another device, which is operated through another encoded mechanism that reads the meaning of the code and then retrieves the necessary atoms and molecules described by the code and assembles them in the proper sequence to produce the protein molecule that the code describes. So we find one accidentally formed code reading another accidentally formed code to enable every cell in your body to constantly manufacture (molecule by molecule) all of the 20,000 different protein molecules that you need.
If you believe this, then perhaps you will believe anything. Some people believe that a machine that turns horse manure and dirt into a tomato is the product of a very fortunate combination of mutations.
And yet, DNA is nothing in comparison to the design of memory.
More about the Codes Within the Cells
Gene Editing
- There are three areas of the theory of evolution.
The first is where there is cross-breeding within a species and an external influence diminishes the population of one variety and leaves the other to predominate. This is a change within a species but nothing evolves. It is the natural re-arrangement of previously existing dna; no new species new is produced.
The second area is where there is are beneficial mutations in the genetic structure that amplifiy the ability of the altered organisms to survive. Those altered organisms predominate (natural selection) and they do create a separate species. This is classic Darwinian evolution, also called macroevolution. But there is very little evidence, if any, that can be used to directly support macroevolution.
The third is where there is an actual genetic change within a species that enables an altered form of that same species to survive better than before. This is an adaptation within a species and it is called microevolution. There is clear and ample evidence of adaptation within a species.
What is the cause of this adaption? Darwinists theorize that the adaptation is caused by mutations of particular genes such that the resulting organizm is better able to survive. If so, then adapted versions of organisms of the same species would be evidence of classic Darwinian evolution because more of those changes could result in a different species.
In order to demonstrate the mutation of particular genes, one need only compare the original gene and the improved gene and show that they are different. This can be done with the gene-mapping techniques now used.
The Garrett and Rosenthal study set out to do exactly that. The subject that they chose to study was an octopus that had adapted to live both in the tropics and in the frigid waters of Antarctica.
The tropical version of the octopus cannot survive in frigid waters because the temperature of the water drastically slows the transmission of its nerve impulses. But the same octopus thrives in the antartic. The only difference between the warm water octopus and the cold water octopus is an amino acid that is produced by a the same gene in each octopus. Therefore, if the octopus is a product of Darwinian evolution, a study of the same DNA in each octopus (the same gene) should show a mutation.
The gene in the warm water octopus produces an amino acid called isoleucine. Whereas the same gene in the Antarctic octopus produces an amino acid called valine. Valine works in cold water; isoleucine works in warm water.
Garrett and Rosenthal expected to find that the gene that produces these amino acids to be different in each octopus because the amino acids that it produces are different. But they did not. They found that both genes were the same. The gene had not mutated.
The cells of the octopus make a copy of the isoleucine gene for the purpose of producing a molecule of isoleucine. This copy is called RNA and this copying is a natural occurrence in all cells. The isoleucine RNA is not isoleucine itself but instead it is an arrangement a series of 4 different molecules that express a code that is used elsewhere to produce the isoleucine molecule.
But the octopus has something else. Embedded in the octupus cells is a chemical machine that takes the isoleucine RNA and re-programs it to produce valine instead. This machine physically changess the molecular arrangement of the isoleucine RNA to become the correct code for valine instead. So here is a mechanism that moves molecules of RNA around to re-code it. See Garrett, S. and J.J. C. Rosenthal. 2012. RNA Editing Underlies Temperature Adaptation in K+ Channels from Polar Octopuses. Science, 334 (6070): 848-851)
How complicated it this recoding? The mRNA code for isoleucine has 9 letters (ATT ATC ATA). The mRNA code for valine has 12 letters (GUU GUC GUA GUG). With 12 letters, the chances for the valine code occuring by accident are 1 in 3,628,800 (and that is after reducing the chances to account for the double U in the first three and the double G in the last). And for this to have evolved through natural selection not only would the mechanism have to have evolved the ability to write the valine code, but also the mehanism itself would have to have evolved. And the mechanism itself could not have any effect on the survival of the octopus in cold water until the mechanism itself as well as the coding had been perfected.
If you believe in evolution you do not believe that accidental mutations changed the dna of the octopus. You believe that somehow accidental mutations created a chemical machine that knows how to rearrange the RNA molecules that express the CODE that produces isoleucine to become the code that expresses valine instead. No open minded person could believe that. It is simply absurd.
Memory
- If you are an evolutionist, you believe that random chance produced a system for storing the memories of a lifetime into the electrical arrangement of the individual molecules in your brain. This arrangement is another undecipherable non-physical digital code. If you are an evolutionist, you believe that this non-physical digital code "grew" along side of the method for storing memories. You don't know how it did it, but you are sure that it did it by millions of theoretical beneficial mutations. Millions of theoretical beneficial mutations must have done it because the alternative is wholly unacceptable - a Creator.There are trillions upon trillions of these molecules that hold the code that records the memories of a lifetime.
And when the living molecular computer indexes them all, the evolutionist says to himself "My how fortunate that these same accidents that produced a code that can store thought, logic, vision and emotions also produced a way to index the trillions of molecules that contain that code so we can recall what we wish by merely thinking about it!"
And when the evolutionist finds that his astounding belief is weakening under the ponderous weight of common sense, he has only to ponder the skull of Lucy. Surely that proves that trillions upon trillions of organized electrical connections operating in perfect sequence must have evolved.
But in reality, the real reason is not scientific at all. The real reason is that the alternative is simply unacceptable. It is theologically incorrect.
Eyes
- There is no projector in your brain. Vision is an immensely complex structure of interlocking logic and concepts that, when interpreted by a living computer, can express three dimential motion and millions of different colors. This is done by non-physical codes carried by electrical impulses.
If you believe in evolution, you believe that a device that captures a pattern of light and then separates it into 126 million electrical signals (the number of rods and cones in both eyes) "occurred" by means of the natural action of time and chance mutations. These 126 million constantly changing electrical signals - by fiat of pure accident - are another extremely complicated electrical code that "grew" until it could convey moving images and millions of different colors. It did this because all of the other animals that could not encode millions of colors died.
The processor that simultaneously reads 126 million constantly changing electrical signals and produces the perception of an extremely a high resolution three dimensional moving color picture does this in the space of nanoseconds, such that there is no perceptible delay between the action and the perception of the action.
Some of these devices work for more than a century without stopping. Fortunately, this device was somehow connected to another device that stores these pictures into memory and conveys the entire sequence by encoding it into the arrangements of molecules, indexes it and encodes the method by which it can be effectively retreived by the action of a thought.
Anti-scientific Argument
- If you believe in evolution, you believe that it is logical to conclude that there is no Designer solely because evolution presumes that He does not exist.
Evolution says that it cannot make any conclusion about a supernatural being because it cannot posit the existence of anything that it cannot physically observe and measure. Therefore, it argues that since it has not observed a Designer, a Designer cannot exist and since there is no such Designer, evolution is the only realistic explanation for all of life.
This is all well and good until the inconceivable complexities of life indicate that there must have been a Designer. Evolution cannot logically argue that a Designer does not exist solely because evolution refuses to consider Him.
If I say there must be a reason for something but under no circumstances will that reason be be X, I have proved absolutely nothing about X. Nor can I use my argument to prove that X is not the reason or that X does not exist.
Hypothetical Falsifiability (the quality of a theory of being susceptible to being proven wrong)
-If you believe in evolution, you follow a theory that, by its own terms, can never be falsified.
It is a principal of logic that any theory must be subject to hypothetical falsifiability or it is logically irrelevant. That is, in order for any theory to be initially credible it must be hypothetically falsifiable. There must theoretically be some way to prove it wrong, if it is wrong.
For instance, if my theory is that purple spiders weave the snowflakes that fall, the theory is obviously foolish, but it is hypothetically falsifiable because anyone can fly a plane to the clouds to see if there are any purple spiders making snowflakes. On the other hand, if my theory is that purple spiders weave snowflakes and the purple spiders are invisible, the theory is illogical on its face because it is not hypothetically falsifiable.
Evolution's response to this argument is "No matter how complex life is, it had to have evolved because there is no Designer." Creation asks, "How do you know that there is no Designer?" And evolution responds "Because everything evolved." That is not a logical argument. Evolution is not hypothetically falsifiable because it refuses to even consider the existence of a Creator.
Evolution simply presumes that there is no Creator and therefore evolution is the best explanation, no matter what degree of complexity one can demonstrate. When the observed complexity strains the credulity and no substantive explanation can be provided, evolution responds with "Evolution is too slow to be observed but we know that even the most complex elements of life must have evolved because they are there. That just goes to show how efficient evolution really is!"
That response similar to the theory of the snowflakes. When one attempts to test it by showing that there are no purple spiders in the clouds, evolution's response is effectively that the spiders are in fact there because we say they are; but, like the millions of fortunate mutations, they cannot be observed. But we know that there are invisible purple spiders in the clouds because we have snowflakes!
The true scientific approach is to presume nothing whatever about a Creator and then to look at the complexities of life to see whether it is more reasonable to conclude that such complexities were designed by a Designer or whether they are the result of random mutations and environmental pressures. Evolution does not take this approach because the outcome is unsuitable.
Intelligent Design, on the other hand, is quite hypothetically falsifiable because it does not refuse to consider the existence of evolution. The theory of Intelligent Design may be falsified by looking at creation and showing that evolution is simply more credible.
Intelligent design may be proven false by showing some evidence that 10000000000000000 fully timed and organized neurological connections in the human brain (click here for our page on this issue) occurred by a series of random genetic mistakes. However, evolution cannot win that argument, so it argues things like whale bones and the skull of Lucy and presumes ab initio that intelligent design is the product of inferior minds blunted by religious oppression.
The refusal of evolution to even consider the existence of a Designer disqualifies the theory from proving that a Designer does not exist.
The Brain and K
If you believe in evolution, you believe that the human brain, which is, among other things, a massive computer, was never programmed. Because, being an evolutionist, you have already excluded the possibilty of a Creator, no matter what the evidence shows.
There is a massive computer in Japan known as K. According to Wikipedia, K is so large it requires 9.89 megawatts of electricity to operate it. That is the equivalent of the amount of electricity needed to run approximately 10,000 suburban homes. Fujitzu, the maker of the computer, does not publish the physical dimensions of K, but photographs show that K is enormous. It is so enormous that one does not describe K by the number of feet, but by the number of aisles of massive computer cabinets. There are at least 12 such aisles. K has more than 80,000 2.8 GHz 8-core SPAR64 VIIIfx processors and it computes at the rate of 10.51 quadrillion computations per second. K is used for massive data processing such as earthquake and disaster simulations.
Recently, however, it was used for a human brain simulation program (see http://www.riken.jp/en/pr/press/2013/20130802_1/)
For the brain simulation, a team of programmers programmed K to simulate a neural network of 1.73 billion nerve cells that interconneced with 10.4 trillion synapses. 82,944 processors were necessary and the memory required was in excess of that contained in 250,000 PC's. This massive programming effort was accomplished by an international team working together from 2009 through 2013. When one takes into account that the operation of such a program in real time would require every one of the 10.4 trillion synapses to be sequenced and timed properly, the enormity of the task becomes more clear. But despite the massive effort, the end product was a simulation of only 1% of a human brain.
Have you ever clicked the shutter of a film camera? The click on a simple film camera is normally 1/25 of a second. There are actually two clicks, one for the opening of the shutter and the other for the closing of it. But they are so close together, one can hardly distinguish both clicks. In the time between those two clicks, K has processed 52 billion computations. Each one was logical and each one occurred pursuant to a pre-designed computer program that had been written by a team of international experts. That is the computing power that is present in K.
When the program had been completed, it was loaded into K and started. When K finished, it had completed the processing that is necessary for 1% of the human brain to operate for one second. But it took K longer that one second. It took K 40 minutes and in doing so it completed 124.8 quadrillion organized computations and used enough electricity to run 10,000 suburban homes for that same period of time. So it took K 2400 times as long as it takes the human brain to do the same thing - with the brain (or rather 1% of it) running perhaps on a crust of bread. Taking into account these figures (one second's worth of 1% of the processing power of a brain), the brain is 240,000 times as powerful as K -- and that is only for one pre-defined second's worth of computing.
So there are two computers in this comparison. It took a team of renowned international programmers approximately 4 years to program one of them to process one second's worth of 1% of the other. If you are an evolutionist, you believe that only one of these computers was actually programmed: the slow one. As far as the other one goes, well, it was the cosmic rays, the environment and dying animals that programmed -- and created -- that one. And, if you are an evolutionist, you actually see this conclusion as rational. It has to be rational. Because to you, the alternative is simply unacceptable. So, really, anything is rational to you as long as it is evolution and as long as it excludes the possibility of a Creator.
That is simply not science.