Ten 'Evolutionary Inventions'

The New Scientist for 9/4/05 sported an article entitled 'Evolution's Greatest Inventions'.  These were, in order of appearance, Multicellularity, the Eye, the Brain, Language, Photosynthesis, Sex, Death, Superorganisms, Symbiosis and Parasitism.  The Cell, or Life, was notable by its absence, although I concede that spontaneous generation of life is not, strictly speaking, evolution, but I have to say that I was rather amused at its non-inclusion.

As it is axiomatic that those subjects chosen should cause the most headaches to Evolutionists in the way of explanations, it seemed appropriate that we should also have a look at these 'inventions' from the point of view of Creation, laying out some of the inconvenient detail which the New Scientist writers skirted.

The issue here is that to be as complex as we are, (or a good deal less so, but we'll let that pass) we have to be made of many cells, not one.  The basic reason for this is that a single cell would neither be strong enough nor viable in any other sense if it was as big as a human being, and neither would it be able to perform all the tasks required.  We have many different cells, performing a myriad of functions.  There are bone cells, retina cells, skin cells, blood cells, muscle cells, nerve cells, to name a small fraction of the total, and it would not be organisationally possible to have all those functions performed in one cell.  So we have division of labour, which works as well in the body as it does in any factory, and for the same reasons.

The question for evolutionists is how life moved from a single cell to organisms made up of millions.  If we can gracefully slide over the impossibilities of spontaneous generation of life, whatever we do we have to start with a single cell.  It then has to be explained how organisms with one hundred thousand million cells, like ourselves, came into being.

There are no organisms with 2, 4, 6, 8 or 16 cells, and there is not the remotest evidence that any such creatures have ever lived.  The smallest multicellular organism has 800 cells.  Yet such intermediate or transitional forms must have existed in the past if evolution happened.  This gap between the Protozoa (single-celled animals) and the Metazoa (multi-celled animals) has never been filled, and that is as true in the fossil record as it is of the situation today.  There are clusters of cells which act in a commensual way, but each cell remains an organism in its own right for the larger part of its life.  Thus there is this gap (again) between reality and what evolution demands if it ever happened.  Just to compound the problem, neither is there any evidence that single-celled animals appeared first.

Many cells are sensitive to light, which is hardly surprising in view of the fact that light is a form of energy, and quite a vigorous one at that, and all molecules are affected by energy to some degree.  However there is a vast difference between a few molecules susceptible to energy input and the sort of complexity required to convert that energy into some type of signal, and transmit it elsewhere, which is essentially what we see happening in those organisms such as starfish which have 'eyespots'.  There is another immense gap between that level of organisation and the one shown by the mammalian (or the molluscan - squid, octopus) eye.

The human eye possesses about one hundred and twenty five million rods to detect white light, and some seven million cones which respond to colour.  From these cells, which together form the retina, come about a million nerves clustered together as the optic 'nerve'.  It is not difficult to deduce that some fairly complex interconnections exist between the rods and cones in the retina and the nerve cells which connect the eye to the optical centre at the back of the brain.  Indeed, the initial interconnections and the optic nerve itself form a very sophisticated 'pre-processsor' for the optical centre, a computer in its own right, helping to organise the visual data as it is passed back through the head.

The retina is only one part of a superbly designed and produced unit, easily beating the best man can make for efficiency.  Together with the rest of the optical parts the eye lens is far more transparent than glass, is flexible so that focusing can be achieved, and can work for the best part of one hundred years with no maintenance.  The musculature around the eye form a sophisticated control system allowing us to move the eyes independently so that the fovea, the point of distinct vision, of each eye can be aimed at the same point and the images made to coincide.

The optic nerve processes the signals on the way to the optical centre at the back of the brain.  Part of this processing is a very sophisticated filtering and integrating system so that, although all data is carried by nerve pulses the vision appears smooth and continuous.

To some extent the optical system is even reprogrammable.  Experiments with spectacles which turn the vision upside down show that the brain can, given time, invert the entire image so that it becomes usable to the individual again.  This would not normally be necessary, but smaller alterations could easily be effected to adjust for injury, should that become necessary.  It has also been shown that even if the optical centre at the back of the brain is destroyed, eventually other parts of the brain can be co-opted to form a sort of visual centre, although its processing is not so sophisticated.  But it does allow the victims of such trauma to navigate objects, and 'see' in a limited fashion.

This raises all sorts of awkward questions about how sight 'developed'.  How, for example, did it obtain its reprogrammability when the chances of needing this type of sophistication would never be needed by the vast majority of the population?

How anyone can seriously contemplate the possibility that the brain came as a product of blind chance, by the now totally discredited notion of mindless 'selection pressure', is utterly beyond me.  The human brain consists of some thirty thousand million cells, each cell having between a thousand and ten thousand connections to other cells.  To put this into some sort of perspective, if half of North America was covered in trees, with ten thousand trees to the square mile, and each tree had one hundred thousand leaves, the total number of leaves would approximate to the number of connections in your brain.

Unlike a typical digital computer, a PC, which can only process a single string of commands at one time (although the modern ones do it very quickly), the brain acts in a massively parallel fashion, with many millions, perhaps billions of computations taking place at the same time.  This explains why the nerve pulses in our bodies are in the order of tens per second (in a modern PC the figure is several thousand million) yet in real time the brain deals with a staggeringly large quantity of data.

There is good evidence that every second of our lives is recorded in fine detail, all the sensual input, the images, sounds, smells, etc., and all the thoughts and emotions, so that we could actually relive our entire lives if we had the time (which has some interesting implications from the point of view of the judgment).  The visual data alone amounts to between 5000 million and 10,000 million pieces of data per second, all of which is processed so that we can make sense of it instantly.

As we live our brains are constantly, and massively, 'pattern matching', comparing what we see, hear, feel and smell with what we have already experienced, sometimes many years previously, so that almost without perceptible pause we can subconsciously identify all items on a continuous basis, and recognise everything.  If we don't, and there are some unfortunates whose memories have been 'blocked' in some way so that they can't, we quickly become confused and fearful.

The visual processes of the brain are endlessly assessing the images arriving at the retina for shapes, edges, angles, contrast, colour, brightness and size, to name some of the more common ones, and then combining the results from the two eyes to generate spatial information such as distance of objects from the eye, the distance between objects, the movement both absolute and relative to the observer, and then, just to ice the cake, recording the lot.

This is all largely a subconscious activity in that it takes place without conscious effort, yet the conscious part of the brain is constantly tapping into it for the information it needs, and sidelining the rest.  We can walk, drive, even fly an aircraft, and at the same time engage in conversation on a wholly different subject, 'dipping' into the basic activity only when we need to and relegating most of the work to the subconscious.  We are solemnly assured that all this came as a result of blind chance!  I think some people need to get hold of a bit of reality here.

Despite recent reports about a few mammals, and even now birds, having language, most of which have been called into question, there is no doubt that human beings are unique in their use of language.  The human brain is wired particularly to facilitate speech.  The evolutionist's dilemma is the old one of the chicken and the egg.  Which came first, language or the speech centre, a part of the brain devoted entirely to the production of spoken language?  Language is not produced without the speech centre being fully formed, but the latter is redundant without the ability to communicate in the way we know as speech.  That a whole chunk of brain should simply spring into existence, or be hijacked from a previous use (which would be a serious loss, considering all the facilities that the brain needs) is simply absurd.

The real problem with language is that anthropologists and linguists hotly disagree as to its geographical source.  The anthropologists favour Africa.  The latest message from the linguists who work with the facts, however, is that all known languages can be traced back to one which had its origin in (surprise, surprise) Mesopotamia.

Both the processes in the eye and those of photosynthesis harness the energy of light for the benefit of the organism.  The problem with photosynthesis, at least in an evolutionary scheme, is that of when it arose (ignoring the insuperable difficulties associated with all the structures and reactions, of course).  There are no indications from the fossil record as to when it 'appeared'.

One problem associated with photosynthesis is that of when oxygen was first in the atmosphere, because, of course, photosynthesis is the only life-process which produces that gas.  This is a bigger issue than the evolutionists would like us to know about.  Let me guide you through this particular minefield.

Oxygen is both dangerous and a life-saver.  It is dangerous in that organic molecules without the protection afforded by a living cell quickly get chewed up by oxygen.  In the presence of oxygen any idea of a 'pre-biotic soup' can be forgotten.  Oxygen would have had a field-day, destroying any possible precursors of proteins far faster than they could form - as I happen to know, being a Chemist.  This means, in any evolutionary scheme, that oxygen could not have been present in the atmosphere of the early earth.

But Oxygen is a life-saver in that it protects us from the high-energy ultra-violet radiation that the sun spews out.  Oxygen is converted to ozone in the upper atmosphere, and ozone is a very good absorber of UV.  Without it we would die, quite simply, hence the modern worry about the thinning of the ozone layer over the Arctic.

This means that even if cells were present in the early earth they would have been snuffed out very rapidly by the sun's radiation.  Evolutionists, therefore, have to choose either an early earth without oxygen, or one with it, and neither is tenable as a scenario.  This is the evolutionist's equivalent of a rock and a hard place.  Without oxygen (the present favoured position) UV light would annihilate any cell which had the temerity to form.  With oxygen any unprotected organic molecules would suffer exactly the same fate.  Have you ever seen this analysed by the likes of David Attenborough or David Bellamy?  Not their balliwick, they would claim.  Sorry guys, but I strongly disagree.  This is simply cowardice, ducking a very fundamental issue.

Sexual reproduction, scientifically, is a process which enables characters in an organism to be mixed up from those which their parents had, making it possible for you to have children with your eye colour, but your partner's nose shape.

Sexual reproduction ensures variety in organisms, and therefore individuality.  The only other possible type of reproduction in practice, called asexual reproduction, produces clones of one parent, perfect copies.  Many small animals and plants can reproduce in both ways, but while asexual reproduction is quick, sexual reproduction makes the organisms more resilient to adverse conditions.

Asexual reproduction, whether considered at cell or organism level, is an immensely complex and delicate process.  Sexual reproduction, requiring the mixing of two cell contents, is another order of magnitude more complicated.  The difficulty for evolutionists is to work out how one developed from the other, given the usual constraint that all individuals produced must be vigorous and healthy, and survive to produce another generation.  Since thousands of scientists working together have been unable to plumb the complexities of either reproductive process, it beggars belief that one of these processes could just mutate into the other.

Death is touted as a triumph for evolution because this supposedly forces organisms to produce progeny, with the possibility that, as they do so, more 'advanced' forms will appear.  With sexual reproduction these new organisms are going to be subtly different, and will (Cloud Cuckoo Land here we come again) therefore evolve.  Up to the word 'different' in the last sentence the statement is true, but the last stage is fantasy and a travesty of all the known facts.  But there is an important point forgotten or conveniently ignored here.

It is pure assumption that death is the only way evolution could have proceeded.  Why do new organisms have to be produced?  Why, if evolution is supposedly so clever, could it not have devised ways for living things to evolve as they live?  Since life is so plastic, so easily modifiable, in evolutionist eyes, this should have been a no-brainer for the forces driving evolution.  Plenty of much tougher problems have been solved, according to modern thinking.

The evolutionists will simply argue that it didn't happen, which is truer than they imagine, but that is hardly an answer.  Why didn't it?  The evolutionist camp has so many ingenious explanations for unlikely things that this one should also be pretty easy to explain.

This is essentially an association between two organisms which improve the lives of both.  We have a symbiosis with bacteria in our gut, and plant-eating animals even more so.  Ungulates and other ingesters of vegetation depend on bacteria in their gut to break down the strong cellulose walls of the plant cells so that the proteins inside those cells can be made available to the animal.  Without the symbiotic bacteria they probably could not exist.  The bacteria, of course, benefit from the warmth and protection of the animal gut.

Our skin naturally has bacteria on it, which are also symbionts.  The skin bacteria profit from the natural skin emanations, which come from such organs as the sweat and sebaceous (oil producing) glands, and they form a first line of defence against more insidious and dangerous bacteria.  For this reason it is not, actually, a very good idea to wash too frequently, and certainly a bad idea to use special anti-bacterial detergents and soaps.  People who do so invite skin problems.

There is no easy evolutionary answer as to how symbiosis arose in the first place, especially as many such associations are obligate, that is to say, both members of the association depend on it for their very existence.  The Evolutionist will claim that they were independent organisms at first which gradually came to be dependent, although needless to say there is absolutely no evidence for any such thing.

There are a number of these organisms each composed of several radically different species.  Common lichens are typical examples, each consisting of an alga encased in a fungal coat.  Algae can manufacture their food with the help of sunlight, where fungi cannot.  Fungi, however, are generally tougher organisms.  So the symbiosis between the two is very profitable.  The algal cells make the food, and the fungus gets to share in that feast and in return acts as a protective overcoat.

This means that the two species can exist together where separately they would have great difficulty, and, perhaps more importantly, the lichen can begin the colonisation of bare rock, making way for mosses and then larger plants.

This association is illustrative of the type.  The Evolutionists will hype this as the beginning of multicellularity, but it is nothing of the kind, and certainly doesn't explain how the association began.  The members of such an association are often dependent on each other to the extent that they cannot survive alone.  So how did they live in the first place?

Parasitism can be considered a subset of symbiosis.  It is an association between two different organisms to the detriment of one of them (and occasionally eventually of the other).  The whole ambience of the word 'parasite' testifies to the nature of the association.

How did parasitism 'arise'?  The Evolutionists laud it as an example of 'survival of the fittest' (which the most knowledgeable now accept as a sterile and meaningless concept.  How do you define 'fitness' in this context?  If you survive, then by definition you are proven fit.  If you are fit, by this definition then you will survive.  It's an empty concept, a classically circular argument.)

So how did it 'arise'?  Evolutionists are up against exactly the same problem as they had for symbiosis and superorganisms, except that they are one step further into the problem.  If survival of the fittest means anything, parasitism must be limited to doing no real harm to the host, else the host becomes 'unfit' and doesn't survive.  Hence parasitism, certainly in the more extreme forms, could never have taken hold.

In point of strict fact few things could better demonstrate the truth of the Fall and its consequences.  I'm not bothered by people who ask 'What about the time before the Fall?  Were there parasites then?'  Quite clearly, there were, but they were relatively harmless, almost certainly beneficial.  Parasites are basically symbionts which appear to have gone nuts.  If the Millennium is to be characterised by carnivores eating hay then a change in the other direction, which must have occurred at the Fall, is hardly a problem.

So much, then, for the ten wonderful 'inventions of evolution'.  It is all surmise, assumption and hypothesis, and depends on a preconceived set of beliefs, none of which have been or can be substantiated.  Indeed the evidence points more in the direction of special creation.