In another thread, a poster said the following.
"I didn’t start believing in the existence of God because some religion said so. What made me a believer was my study of science. The more I learned about how the universe works, specially life forms, the more I realized how incredibly connected and complex everything is. There is so much intelligence, so much creativity and so much purpose behind everything that I couldn’t believe it happened without someone designing it.
That's the base of it. I could develop this subject but there is so much material I would rather do it on a separate post."
I am setting my beliefs and knowledge aside for a moment to solicit thoughts on why it would require intelligence and creativity to create complex beings and to understand what purpose is behind this, and why this would be more plausible to an individual than evolution through natural selection.
This thread was not created as a call-out. The poster offered to expound on this, and I asked her if she would be kind enough to participate in this thread and share her thoughts. I welcome anyone else's thoughts on this as well.
ETA: I neglected to include the fact that the poster mentioned above claims to be well studied on the theory of evolution.
First, thanks for posting this. I had it in mind to do it myself but I’m happy you gave me the motivation. The biggest challenge for me is to not make it too long. I chose only 3 issues to address otherwise this would have to become a book.
The origin of life
Scientists believe that the first cells emerged in the ocean, result of a spontaneous chemical reaction between non-living elements that somehow managed to form complex molecules, so complex they were able to work together and make cells.
With all the technology we have available today, in the controlled environment of a sophisticated lab, with brilliant scientists creating and manipulating the experiments, no one has been able to produce the elements believed to exist back in those days, provoke a chemical reaction between them and create living cells afterwards. Imagine it happening by chance.
Knowing that in order to survive, a cell needs RNA, DNA and proteins to work in sync, what is the probability of having these elements appearing by chance at the same time, in the same place and with the ability to self-replicate? It is easy to talk about “simple life forms, or “simple” cells, but the truth is: there’s no such thing as a simple cell, much less a simple organism.
The human body contains around 100 trillion cells of different kinds, each with its own structure and function. Our body is a network of cells, brilliantly organized, working together nonstop from the moment the embryo is formed until the moment the person dies.
The same way this works for humans, it works for all other species. Every living thing is a feat of engineering, so much so that engineers study animals and plants, to create things that imitate their features (ex the wings of airplanes, contact lenses, fabrics, etc). Am I expected to believe that those life forms appeared by chance? That the human brain is the fruit of many coincidences?
All forms of life have the same origin.
Even though no one really knows how the first living cells originated, for many people it seems reasonable to believe that those few original cells gave rise to the millions of species alive today.
We know that all organisms within a single species are related through descent with modification. We see this in our own families, and plant and animal breeders see it in their work. It is undeniable that mutations occur in species, but does descent with modification explain the origin and diversification of
all living things? Do mutations really produce entirely new species?
We know that some DNA mutations are neutral (they have no effect at all) but the clear majority is harmful, often leading to the weakening and premature death of the organism. In the struggle for survival, natural selection would have to ignore the first and eliminate the second, leaving only the mutations that favor the organism.
Again, scientists have tried to replicate this. In several studies they artificially induced human selected mutations that would favor the organism but after many years of research, they didn’t succeed in creating any new species, only different breeds of the existent ones.
What are the odds that chance succeeded in something that intelligent scientists were unable to do, not only once, but millions and millions of times, since there are millions of species alive today, believed to have evolved from a common ancestor?
That leads me to the 3rd issue.
The fossil record
When Darwin wrote The Origin of the Species, the oldest known fossils were from the Cambrian period. But the Cambrian fossil pattern didn’t fit Darwin’s theory. Instead of starting with one specie that diverged gradually over millions of years into families, orders, classes then phyla, the Cambrian starts with the abrupt appearance of many fully formed phyla and classes of animals. So, complex biological forms appeared right at the start.
Darwin was aware of this problem but he hoped that more data would be found to support his theory. Since that time, further exploration has turned up many layers of the earth older than the Cambrian. Paleontologists have also found Cambrian rocks in Canada, Greenland and China with well preserved fossils. Thanks to that improved knowledge many paleontologists are now convinced that the major groups of animals did appear abruptly in the early Cambrian. The fossil evidence is so strong that this event has become known as “biology’s big bang”. Ancestors or intermediaries are still unknown or unconfirmed for any of the phyla or classes appearing in the Cambrian period.
There are other problems with presenting fossils as proof for evolution, such as the comparative size and the evidence that these creatures are related, since they are separated by millions of years. With such a big interval of time separating the fossils, it is very difficult to establish a connection between them.
This is as simple as I can make such a complicated, vast subject. I would like to finish with a quote from Richard Dawkins, from the book
The Blind Watchmaker: (biology) is “the study of complicated things that give the
appearance of having been designed with a purpose”. Dawkins implies that although living things look like they were designed, in fact they weren’t. I believe that living things appear to have been designed and they were.
Dawkins states that “Darwin made it possible to be an intellectual fulfilled atheist”. He has the right to profess atheism and to make it intellectually fulfilling. But atheism is not science.
PS – I think I failed at not making it too long.
