The year 2019 marks the 160th anniversary of Charles Darwin’s epic thesis, “On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life.”
The premise of that elongated mouthful of a title is that all living creatures evolved through naturalistic methods from a common ancestor. At the time it was a clever and intuitive proposal leading to the modern-day creation of evolutionary biology science. Its model has always sparked intense debate and that remains until today.
Science has made significant strides since this theory was introduced so under the modern microscope of this new learning, does Darwin’s theory still hold up to the scrutiny?
In Darwin’s day, microscopes were very rudimentary, and the existing viewpoint of living cells was largely confined to the concept of a cytoplasmic gel. What we now know about living cells is that they are incredibly complex. Within every cell are intricate manufacturing and transportation systems as well as information sharing on a radical scale. In its microscopic world, it functions like a small city.
So, can natural cell mutation successfully navigate through the increased levels of complexity necessary for evolution? It’s not just that mankind descended from apes, but we must formulate an unbroken evolutionary chain all the way back to Billy and Barbie bacilli bacteria. Does natural evolution possess the speed necessary to blindly transverse from a single-celled organism to human beings in (using the old earth model) less than 5 billion years? Can Chance be our Creator?
Well, let’s do the math. Mutations are relatively uncommon, and the vast majority of mutations are either neutral or defective. To produce an enhancement is very rare although we unfortunately witness these occurrences when disease-inflicting bacteria develop a resistance to the penicillin used to try to kill it. For a single cell to mutate or replicate is not a difficult feat, but for it to transform to a different type of cell is levels of magnitude more challenging.
The human body has more than 200 different types of cells—blood cells, skin cells, muscle cells, brain cells, etc. Thus, a single-celled organism must successfully mutate into these two hundred different types of cells without death or failure. So, let’s create a highly simplified math model to simulate that process and give every possible advantage to natural evolution:
First, let’s make the outrageous assumption that every mutation has a 50% chance of being a successful enhancement and migration to a new type of cell. The other outcome is failure. In order for a single-celled organism to evolve into a 200-celled creature, we’ll need two hundred consecutive successes. Thus, using basic probability, we calculate the chance for success of (1/2) raised to the 200th power which roughly equals 1060.
In giving evolution every courtesy of advantage, we’ll use the old universe model and let’s say the earth was formed immediately after the Big Bang making it roughly 15 billion years old. To maximize opportunity, we’ll assume that every square inch of the earth’s surface was instantly covered in bacteria—say 1000 bacteria/square inch which is about double what you’d find under a toilet seat at your local, public bus stop. We’ll also greatly increase the typical mutation rate to once every second.
Thus, we’ve leaned quite heavily in favor of Darwin’s theory. We’ve started with the earth fully covered with bacteria since the beginning of the universe (adding at least 10 billion years to reality), mutating at the rate of once per second (actual average cell division rate ~1/day and way less than half of those are actual mutations) and having a 50% chance of being a successful or favorable mutation (where reality is typically < 1/1000).
So, we have (103 bacteria/sq. inch) X (8×1017 sq. inches of earth’s surface) X
(1 mutation/second) X (1018 seconds of the universe’s existence) and we get rounding up 1039 bacteria which divided by 1060 leaves us with 1 chance in 1021 of a single celled organism successfully creating the 200 unique-celled creature known as homo sapiens. That’s one chance in one with twenty-one zeroes after it. Even with all those advantageous assumptions: It’s not going to happen. The math simply does not add up.
The fossil record confirms this. First, the evidence does not show a gradual expansion of species as an evolutionary model would forecast, but incredibly rapid growth at a certain stage. In the Cambrian era, there was an exponential increase in the number of species on the planet. This fact is often referred to as the Cambrian explosion where virtually all 33 phylum classes were created in a very short period of time (roughly 50 million years or 1% of earth’s estimated existence). Scouring the fossil record, there is no evidence of a single transient species to show where migration occurred from one species to the next. There’s not one from Billy & Barbie bacteria to Adam and Eve.
Second, the gaps between species also show almost innumerable examples of irreducibly complex organs and cell functions—a death knell to Darwin’s theory that he even admitted in his book by stating, “If it could be demonstrated that any complex organ existed, which could not possibly have been formed by numerous, successive, slight modifications, my theory would absolutely break down.”
To drive the proverbial stake deeper into the heart of Darwin’s theory, we have the intelligence and information aspect of DNA. Darwin had no clue of DNA’s existence. In simplistic terms, DNA is the information system that tells a cell what to do. As Bill Gates once observed, “DNA is like a software program far, far more advanced than any software ever created.” This screams the question, “Well, who wrote it?”
As an illustrative metaphor, to believe Darwin’s version of evolution is to think that a small, thin, flat rock, given enough time, could evolve into a cell phone complete with firmware and software. That’s laughably absurd, but to think we’ve evolved through natural physics and chemical processes is even more ludicrous. Both the “hardware, firmware, and software” of the human persona is far more sophisticated.
So, why are we still teaching this archaic and indefensible theory in school?
It’s not that Darwin’s theory is so admired—it’s the alternative that gives so many people angst. I once asked Christian theologian and famous apologist Dr. William Lane Craig why so many scientists don’t believe in God and he provided an interesting answer, “It’s not because of science.”
The greater evolutionary leap comes in the creation of life or organic matter. If life evolved from unguided natural, chemical processes, then logic dictates that inanimate matter somehow had to evolve into living matter. Billy and Barbie bacteria are now the offspring of Quinton quark and Ellen electron. Known as spontaneous generation, it’s the theory that living organisms can be produced by non-living matter.
It is no longer considered viable, but don’t let the impossible interfere with “science”. Famed biologist and Nobel prize winner George Wald stated with stunning cognitive dissonance, “One has only to contemplate the magnitude of this task to concede that the spontaneous generation of a living organism is impossible. Yet here we are—as a result, I believe, of spontaneous generation.” – Scientific American, August 1954
Here we are indeed!
We know that the universe has a beginning and logically this initial start-up event was due to either chance or design. When the math doesn’t add up for chance, we’re left with design and that implies a Designer. For many scientists that thought becomes a Maalox moment.
It’s time to be bold and toss off the emperor’s new clothes of fear and loathing of a Creator. Naturalism, as a viable explanation for the existence and complexity of this universe is mathematically untenable. Its philosophically-extended brother, atheism, is dead. We’re all deists now (at least). Even should one cling with fervent hope as Linus to his blanket and Great Pumpkin theory, that maybe…just maybe, we got really lucky, one still must objectively admit the pragmatic odds are just too extreme. They extend exponentially past the plausible and natural into the realm of the miraculous. And if the miraculous exists, by definition, there must be the supernatural—there must be a God.
“What kind of God?” is worthy of debate (and for those who are skeptical or inquisitive, I would direct the reader to peruse through the previous set of blogs from February 14th – April 24, 2019). However, the math clearly shows that we humans are not the product of unguided physics and chemistry, but specifically designed and created. It’s time to put a fork in Darwin’s theory of evolution—it’s done and destined for the dustbin of extinction.
