Logic: the answer to evolution.
As a new Christian at Clemson University I was confronted with a very real challenge to my new faith. If the big-bang did occur and all life evolved over millions of years, then either the Biblical account was wrong or it needed to be adjusted to fit modern scientific knowledge. Fitting the accounts to suit science did not seem to me like a good solution. I decided to think for myself more closely at the theory of evolution. Instead of looking to textbooks, I simply thought backwards and then moved forward logically. The answer became so clear that I began to laugh out loud that I had ever believed that humans evolved from bacteria. Try the following exercise for yourself.
STEP ONE: Begin with what we observe about life today.
Humans are incredibly complex. There are approximately 37 trillion cells in our body.[1] We have “about 200 different types of cells, and within these cells there are about 20 different types of structures or organelles.”[2] Individual organelles within the cells have multiple functions. For example,
“The smooth endoplasmic reticulum has such functions as the manufacture of steroid hormones in endocrine cells, the detoxification of organic compounds within liver cells, the release of glucose in liver cells, and regulating the concentration of calcium ions within the cisternal space.”[3]
Cells work in conjunction with one another to make up the many systems of our bodies. You are there in an incredible body. Think of all the systems working together: endocrine, nervous, digestive, circulatory, skeletal, muscle. Some of your cells carry oxygen, others transmit neural impulses, others defend your body from attacking virus and bacteria, others help transfer carbohydrates into energy. Your brain is coordinating all of this, with and without your conscious control. Now, think about how incredible your brain is. One cell in your brain is more complex that the computer you are using now. There are about 100 billion of them in your brain. Your sensory system connected to your brain is also incredible: eyes, ears, nose, skin. Somehow that evolved?
Look at the DNA in every living cell. A simple study of DNA transcription will leave anyone bewildered at how this code of life is unwound, read, and duplicated. And this is happening right now in every cell of our body. Shadowlabs.org has an incredible presentation of how DNA makes proteins.[4] Interestingly, a number of articles dealing with cellular evolution postulate that the first cells that evolved somehow had an early form of self-replicating RNA.[5] Do you know that “the number of cells that an adult male loses per minute is roughly 96 million. Fortunately, in that same minute, about 96 million cells divided, replacing those that died.”[6]
STEP TWO: Start at the beginning of evolution and work forward.
In order for an incredibly complex human to evolve, there needs to have been a first cell which eventually became more complex through time.[7] Evolutionary theory says that the first cell developed in some primordial soup billions[8] of years ago. Now, no one knows for sure what that cell looked like, but it was supposedly simple enough to have evolved and yet also complex enough to be considered living. Let’s assume they were bacteria, which are single-celled organisms with no organelles.[9] The chances of that first cell evolving are astronomical, but let’s assume that the first cell did evolve and life somehow did begin somewhere in some primordial soup. What logically comes next? Everything is working against the death of that cell. Time does not help. Conditions had to have been perfect, but will those conditions last for days, months, years, decades, thousands of years? How long did that first cell float around? What did it do? Obviously at some point it needs to evolve, but how? Given the sheer odds of that one cell ever “making it,” evolutionists postulate that life must have begun at more than one place and more than one time. This again increases the odds.
Let’s assume again that somehow some of those cells did make it and we have millions of them all over the earth. What next? Somehow that cell needs to be able to survive by obtaining and storing energy, by being able to move on its own and not just float around. How do cilia or flagella or even amoeboid movement gradual develop? Also, some cells need to develop into what will eventually be plants. Others into what will become animals. At some point others will also need develop into asexual and sexual organisms that either reproduce on their own or somehow find each other and interact with one another. This is just the beginning of an almost infinite amount of change that must take place to have the living world we live in now. The words “almost infinite” are not hyperbole. No one knows the number of species that exist on the world today. Estimates are between two and fifty million.[10] The difference depends on how species are defined. There are about 950,000 species of insects! There are numerous species of every animal from shark to virus: does this all point us to evolution?
STEP THREE: Do the math.
Just take one species on this earth. Take a pine tree for example. From single cell to a pine tree. Can you imagine the changes that need to take place from that original plant cell? Bark, resin, needles, cones, pollen, roots: how many evolutionary changes needed to take place for just those parts of a pine tree not to mention the internal processes that go on in the tree from reproduction to photosynthesis to transpiration. There are over 120 species of pine trees in the world. Now, take something a little more complex: butterflies. There are over 18,000 species of butterflies. Not only do evolutionists need to account for their differences (wings, legs, antennae, color, wing veins) but also something even more difficult: the unique stages of a butterfly. And not only that, what about their incredible migratory instincts that permit a second and third generation butterfly to return from thousands of miles away to their “grandmothers” birthplace. But even before all of this, what was a butterfly before it was a butterfly? How many thousands of changes needed to occur for it to finally have eyes and wings and antenna?
STEP FOUR: Jump again to today.
From where do the changes come ? Where are observable changes occurring between species? Moths and finches can change because of environmental change, but they are still moths and finches. What made the original single cells that floated on this earth more complex? How do these unnatural changes come about? There is nothing natural about an e-coli developing a motor to move around. Can supposed natural selection, time, and mutations account for the changes involved there? The flagella of e-coli has often been brought up as an example of an impossibility for evolution. For those who don’t know, scientist have found out that the flagella of an e-coli does not just wiggle back it forth. It rotates just like a motor at “several hundred to > 1000 times per second”![11]How many evolutionary changes are necessary to produce that motor? What process could account for a motor in a cell?
Have you ever looked under a microscope at water from a pond? It is fascinating to see the protozoa swimming and moving around. About 20,000 protozoan species exist. There are 156 named species of plasmodium. Take the one responsible for malaria: plasmodium falciparum. Its life cycle[12] is very complex starting in the salivary glands of the mosquito. When the mosquito bites a human it enters the blood stream and arrives at the liver cells as schizonts and later exits as merozoites into the blood stream where they develop into trophozoites, schizonts and merozoites. If another mosquito bites an infected individual then some merozoites from the blood that have transformed into gametocytes initiate sexual development in the midgut, involving ookinetes and oocysts. Sporozoites then infect the salivary glands of the mosquito and the cycle starts again. This complexity of this microscopic organism is astounding. To make it even more complex the host mosquito must be a female Anopheles which is one of 2500 species of mosquitos. Look at the diagram of the life cycle of plasmodium falciparum from the CDC and remember that this is one of the deadliest microscopic organisms on earth today.[13]
If you think that life cycle is complex, consider also Dicrocoelium dendriticum, the Lancet liver fluke. There are over 10,000 species of flukes and thousands of liver fluke. Living mainly in the livers of cows and sheep, their eggs are released through the feces of their host. When a specific snail ingests the eggs, the larva hatch and begin to develop in the snail. The snail irritated by the parasite “walls the growing parasite off in mucus cyst, eventually coughing up a slime ball containing the larvae.”[14] A second host, an ant, eats the slime ball containing the larval flukes which then distribute throughout the body of the ant. One larva attaches itself to a bundle of nerves that influence the ant in bizarre way. While other ants return at night underground, the “zombie” ant walks off and climbs a blade of grass and attaches itself to the tip of the blade grass with its mandibles. The ant returns in the morning and fulfills it function in the colony, but continues every evening to attach itself to the tip of a blade of grass until it is eaten by a cow or a sheep. The larva then burrow through the stomach making their way to the liver where it develops into an adult and then continues again this remarkable life cycle. How could this complex life cycle have evolved? Three hosts are involved for its survival.
STEP FIVE: Is there another solution?
Look at not just yourself but all the complexity of life around you: sparrows, oak trees, grass, earthworms, grasshoppers . . . they are all crying out to you and are telling you the same thing: look to your Creator. The title of this article says that logic is the answer to evolution. The Bible concurs. Listen to the words of Paul to the church at Rome written about A.D. 55: “What can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them” (Rom 1.19). He goes on to say that God “has been clearly perceived… through the things that have been made” and the conclusion: “they are without excuse” (1.20). You know God created this world and yet you are not willing to recognize Him or even give thanks to Him. Instead your “foolish heart is darkened.” (1.21) You claim to be wise, but instead you have become a fool (1.22). Logic points to a creator not to unnatural processes.
The problem Paul was addressing was the willful ignorance of God’s eternal power and divine nature that are clearly seen in his creation. My struggle with evolution was solved when I thought through the logic of evolution and compared it with the logic of the wonderful creation all around us. The conclusion ended up being easy, it was a choice between an all-powerful and loving Creator God and unnatural evolution.
Perhaps you would say, “Well, I don’t understand it, but some very smart people do. I’ll just trust what they tell me.” Ultimately then you are basing your belief on the origin of your life on some scientist who is not even sure himself. Carl Woese, writing in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America states, “the evolution of modern cells is arguably the most challenging and important problem the field of Biology has ever faced.”[15] He goes on to state that the goal of finding a global view of how cells organize and work is “as elusive a goal as ever.” Scientist are not sure how it all happened. With the increases in scientific discoveries, especially the breakthroughs in the study of DNA, scientists recognize that it is beyond them to come up with a coherent solution. Why not consider what God has already revealed in His word? God created the first male and female and all the animals and plants. Everything you see today came from God’s initial creation. The Bible which give the creation account in Genesis 1 and 2 is also an incredible book. Consider this article for further study.
I hope this helps. Feel free to comment or forward your questions and thoughts.
[1] Shyamala Iyer. “Building Blocks of Life. http://askabiologist.asu.edu/explore/building-blocks-life
[2] “The Cells in your body. » http://sciencenetlinks.com/student-teacher-sheets/cells-your-body/
[3] “Smooth Endoplasmic Reticulum.” http://www.facstaff.bucknell.edu/kfield/organelles/ser.html
[4] www.youtube.com/watch?v=SMtWvDbfHLo
[5] “The first cell is thought to have arisen by the enclosure of self-replicating RNA and associated molecules in a membrane composed of phospholipids.” Cooper as seen on http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK9841/.
[6] Ibid.
[7]“Life almost certainly originated in a series of small steps, each building upon the complexity that evolved previously.” (How did Life Originate. http://evolution.berkeley.edu/evosite/evo101/IIE2bDetailsoforigin.shtml)
[8] “As early as two billion years ago, some cells stopped going their separate ways after replicating and evolved specialized functions.” Ibid. “It appears that life first emerged at least 3.8 billion years ago, approximately 750 million years after Earth was formed.” (Cooper. The Cell: A Molecular Approach. 2nd Edition. Found on http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK9841/).
[9] See this article which also points to bacteria: “The Evolution of the Cell.” http://learn.genetics.utah.edu/content/cells/organelles/
[10] “Estimated number of plant and animal species on earth.” http://www.factmonster.com/ipka/A0934288.html
[11] Michael D. Manson, “Dynamic motors for bacterial flagella.” http://www.pnas.org/content/107/25/11151.full
[12] Plamodium (sic) Life Cycle. http://www.icp.ucl.ac.be/~opperd/parasites/malaria4.htm
[13] http://www.cdc.gov/dpdx/malaria/
[14] http://thebestnursingschools.net/info/bizarre-parasitic-life-cycles
[15]He also further states “Evolving the cell requires evolutionary invention of unprecedented novelty and variety, the likes of which cannot be generated by any familiar evolutionary dynamic.” (Woese. On the evolution of cells. http://www.pnas.org/content/99/13/8742.long).