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At the basis of the theory of neo-Darwinian evolution lie two basic assumptions: that changes in morphologies are induced by random mutations on the genome, and that these changes in the morphology of plant or animal make the life form either more or less successful in the competition to survive. With nature doing the selection, evolutionists claim to remove the theory of evolution from that of a random process. We are told that the selection is in no way random. It is a function of the environment. The randomness, however, remains as the basic driving force that produces the varied mutations from among which the selection by survival takes place. The question is: Can random mutations produce the evolution of life? Because evolution is primarily a study of the history of life, statistical analyses of evolution are plagued by having to assume the many conditions that were extant during those long gone eras. Rates of mutations, the contents of the "original DNA," and environmental conditions -- all these affect the rate and direction of the changes in morphology. And these are all unknowns. From a secular view, one must never ask what the likelihood is that a specific set of mutations will occur to produce a specific animal. This would imply a direction to evolution, and basic to all Darwinian theories of evolution is the assumption that evolution has no direction. The induced changes, and hence the new morphologies, are totally random. The challenges presented by the environment determine which will survive to produce the new generations and which will perish. PROTEIN COMBINATIONS With this background, let's look at the process of evolution. Life is in essence a symbiotic combination of proteins (and other structures, but here I'll discuss only the proteins). The history of life teaches us that not all combinations of proteins are viable. At an event recorded in the fossil record and known as the Cambrian explosion of animal life, some 50 phyla (basic body plans) suddenly and simultaneously appeared in the fossil record. This is the first appearance of complex animal life. Only 30 to 34 of the phyla survived. The rest perished. Since then the fossil record and modern existing biota reveal that no new phyla have evolved. At a later stage in the flow of life, a catastrophic event (possibly the collision of the earth with a massive comet or meteor) eliminated 90% of all life forms. The ecology was wide open for new phyla to develop. Again, no new phyla appear. The implication is that only a limited number of life forms (phyla) are viable. It is no wonder that the most widely read science journal, Scientific American, asked "has the mechanism of evolution altered in ways that prevent fundamental changes in body plans of animals" (November 1992). It is not that the mechanism of evolution has changed; it is our understanding of how evolution functions that must change to fit the data presented by the fossil record and by the discoveries of molecular biology.
It is difficult and painful to discard entrenched notions of what is actually true, even when scientific data demand such an abandonment. Pure randomness as the source of the mutations that neo-Darwinian concepts demand to drive the evolution of life no longer stands against the mounting evidence of scientific data. Unfortunately, the emotional commitment to a totally materialist view of life makes discarding this notion problematic. Let's look at the likelihood that random mutations could have produced viable forms of life. Life as we know it is built largely of combinations of proteins working in symbiotic harmony. But as we've seen, only certain combinations produce viable life. Other combinations fail. Humans and all mammals have some 50,000 genes. That implies, as an order of magnitude estimate, some 50,000 to 100,000 proteins active in mammalian bodies. It is estimated that there are some 30 animal phyla on Earth. If the genomes of each animal phylum produced 100,000 proteins, and no proteins were common among any of the phyla (a fact we know to be false, but an assumption that makes our calculations favor the random evolutionary assumption), there would be (30 x 100,000) 3 million proteins in all life. (The actual number is vastly lower.) Now let's consider the likelihood of these 3 million viable combinations of proteins forming by chance, recalling that the events following the Cambrian explosion of animal life and the later decimation of 90% of life taught us that only certain combinations of proteins are viable. Proteins are complex coils of several hundred amino acids. Take a typical protein to be a chain of 200 amino acids. The observed range is from less than 100 amino acids per protein to greater than 1000. There are 20 commonly occurring amino acids that join in varying combinations to produce the proteins of life. This means that the number of possible combinations of the amino acids in our model protein of 200 amino acids is 20 to the power of 200 (i.e. 20 multiplied by itself 200 times), or in the more usual 10-based system of numbers, approximately 10 to the power of 260 (i.e. the number one, followed by 260 zeros!). Nature has the option of choosing among the 10 to power of 260 possible proteins, the 3 million proteins of which all viable life is composed. In other words, for each one correct choice, there are 10 to power of 254 wrong choices! Simon Conway Morris, professor of evolutionary paleontology at the University of Cambridge and fellow of the Royal Society of England, is the scientist who revealed the significance of the Cambrian explosion of animal life. He refers to this vast biological waste land of failed life forms as the "multidimensional hyperspace of biological reality." Can this have happened by random mutations of the genome? Not if our understanding of statistics is correct. It would be as if nature reached into a grab bag containing a billion billion billion billion billion billion billion billion billion billion billion billion billion billion billion billion billion billion billion billion billion billion billion billion billion billion billion billion non-viable proteins -- and pulled out the one that worked. And then repeated this trick a million times. With odds like that, it is amazing that nature and our bodies ever got it or get it right. But perhaps not every amino acid can join with every other amino acid. If this is the case, then the number of possible combinations will be reduced. To get even hint for what this would do to the hyperspace of failed choices, I looked at combinations of amino acids that actually exist in just six proteins. Among the proteins I used were bovine insulin and bovine ribonuclease. The number of potential amino acid combinations just from this modest sampling of proteins was 10 to the power of 20. Again, nature would have had to select the one viable combination from among 100 billion billion wrong choices. Either our knowledge of statistical probability is skewed or something other than randomness is operating. The late Harvard professor, Stephen Jay Gould, suggested that the flow of life is "channeled" along these basic animal phyla. Nobel laureate, organic chemist and a leader in origin of life studies, Professor deDuve writes in his excellent book, Tour of a Living Cell, "If you equate the probability of the birth of a bacteria cell to chance assembly of its atoms, eternity will not suffice to produce one... Faced with the enormous sum of lucky draws behind the success of the evolutionary game, one may legitimately wonder to what extent this success is actually written into the fabric of the universe." Life written into the fabric of the universe sounds a bit metaphysical. Morris, in his book Life's Solutions (Cambridge University Press, 2003), writes: "Life is simply too complex to be assembled on any believable time scale... evolution's uncanny ability to find the short cuts across the multidimensional hyperspace of biological reality. It is my suspicion that research might reveal a deeper fabric to biology..." Elsewhere Morris identifies this "deeper fabric" as having "metaphysical implications." This impossibility of randomness producing order is not different from the attempt to produce Shakespeare or any meaningful string of letters more than a few words in length by a random letter generator. Gibberish is always the result. This is simply because the number of meaningless letter combinations vastly exceeds the number of meaningful combinations. With life, such gibberish was and is lethal. In brief, randomness cannot have been the driving force behind the success of life. Our understanding of statistics and molecular biology clearly supports the notion that there must have been a direction and a Director behind the success of life. Published: Sunday, November 27, 2005
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there is not enough time in our universe.
but if life did randomly form, it would take untold trillions of years or more, and not just the 4 or 5 billion years that the earth has been here?
(2) Dr. Jose Nigrin 12/2/2005
the unnamed cause
Even if randomness could have happened, this causal fact was from god, or whatever name to genesis you give.
(3) Joe 12/1/2005
a clarifying response
Sir,
There are many things in your response which I feel need to be adressed. We seem to have narrowed our discussion to the origin of the first replicator. From what I understand of your argument, you seem to be saying: Basic biogical protiens are very complex. The odds of something that complicated happening randomly are
incredibly small. I figure this by looking at the possible combinations of the amino acids. There is no way enough possible shots at such a small target could have been fired to score a "hit" randomly. Therefore this is scientific proof of Hashem's direct physical agency.
My response was to challenge some of the steps in your analysis. I am arguing that it is quite possible enough shots were fired on the one hand, and that the mathematical combinations argument simply does not apply to subsequent generations, and thus can not be applied to the human genome.
In other words, he's saying the odds of this happening randomly are vastly worse than hitting the lottery. This is true. I am saying that the Earth - and the universe had enough lottery tickets to make the odds of "winning" likely.
First, the whole universe argument. It is true we have not yet observed another Earthlike planet. But as you point out our own perfectly ordinary, yellow sun managed to have nine planets. It seems odd to assume
that all of the other perfectly
ordinary stars in the main sequence have no planets. And of course, we *have* observed numerous large extra solar planets. I do not believe it likely, that in the *whole* universe, our sun was the only star blessed with rocky planets in the liquid water zone.
Or that given all of the organic chemicals that have been observed in comets, they would not have the same materials to work with.
But, let's say that you are correct for the moment. You take me to task for offering a large possibility that has not yet been observed. I will restrict my discussion to the
Earth. In its early days, how big were
the oceans? How many mols (as in Avogadro) of organic chemicals were swirling around in them? In the early seas, how many possible chemical reactions could have occured in just one second? How many years was
that soup "cooking" for before the first replicator arose? And remeber we only need one. Once it crops up, it does its thing, makes lots of itself and is subject to mutation. The whole mechanism of Evolution kicks in.
Now I am not a paleo-biologist, and the exact composition of the early oceans is not known, but it does not at all seem compelling to me to argue that the oceans were so small, the concentrations of chemicals
were so small, the reaction rates were
so slow, and the time was so short, that there were not a sufficient number of tries to get that first "hit" randomly - or that
we have just proved anything.
As to the three billion years, that was a typo. I meant 4,000,000,0000. As you point out, the earliest bacterial fossils seem
to have cropped up very early in Earth's history. That would indicate to me that if you have the right planetary mix, (initial conditions) the chance of a replicator arising naturally is actually quite large.
As to why would they want to replicate? You seem to implying that Hashem made them want to.
It is not clear that the simple life forms, that lack brains or nervous systems, want anything. A virus is very complicated by molecular standards, but it is also just a "spring loaded" replicator.
Give it a cell, and its little machinery sets to work. We do not need to invoke anything greater than chemistry and physics. I doubt it thinks much about it at all.
More to the point, while the complexity of a virus may (and should) give a certain awe for creation, the fact that it replicates does not constitute proof of any sort of will, or any sort of *direct* evidence
for Hashem's hand at work. It does
what it does. Apples fall down when you drop them, too. If you wish to quibble about just how comlex a virus is, consider prions, the cause of mad cow disease. They really are just big molecules - and they manage to replicate too. If you will they are just very complicated poisons.
My points about simple organisms surviving mutation are to demonstrate that there is both a robust and fast mechanism for tremendous variation in simple life forms, hence you get a lot of "tries" very quickly.
I wish to be clear. I am not questioning Hashem. I am questioning the notion of this debate constituting proof in a scientific sense of Hashem's physical agency. More-over, given that Hashem gives us free will, it is not clear that He would ever let us find such proof.
As to once the replicator gets going. We can not use a simple cominatorial argument at all. Replicators do thier copying mostly right. Mutations are, by definition, when something is different in the copy - and
for sure they arise, but they are
deviations from a parent that was already in existence. Therefore, and emphatically, it is incorrect to assume that you have the whole set of (possible combinations -1) other combinations of codons availible.
Finally, it is true that we do not know exactly how the first replicator arose. Specifically, we do not know the initial conditions of the early Earth. It is not appropriate to jump from "I don't know" to "here
is physical proof of Hashem's
agency." That is completely not kosher science.
Thank You