3 Realities Chance Can’t Explain About Life’s Origins That Intelligent Design Can

The theory that the universe was crafted intentionally explains many essential realities that theories based on spontaneous chance do not.

The scientific establishment is slowly beginning to allow scientists who believe in intelligent design to have a platform. Why? It may be because the theory that the universe was crafted intentionally explains many essential realities that theories based on spontaneous chance do not.

Perhaps the simplest and best argument for intelligent design is to clearly state what you have to believe to not believe in intelligent design, as I did in my book, “In the Beginning and Other Essays on Intelligent Design.” Peter Urone, in his physics text “College Physics,” writes, “One of the most remarkable simplifications in physics is that only four distinct forces account for all known phenomena.”

This is what you have to believe to not believe in intelligent design: that the origin and evolution of life, and the evolution of human consciousness and intelligence, are due entirely to a few unintelligent forces of physics. Thus you must believe that a few unintelligent forces of physics alone could have rearranged the fundamental particles of physics into computers and science texts and jet airplanes and nuclear power plants and Apple iPhones.

These four unintelligent forces of physics may indeed explain everything that has happened on other planets, but let us look at three essential elements of our human existence and examine whether the currently believed origin theory can explain them.

To appreciate that we still have no idea how the first living things arose, you only have to realize that with all our advanced technology we are still not close to designing any type of self-replicating machine; that is still pure science fiction. We can only create machines that create other machines, but no machine that can make a copy of itself.

When we add technology to such a machine, to bring it closer to the goal of reproduction, we only move the goalposts because now we have a more complicated machine to reproduce. So how could we imagine that such a machine could have arisen by pure chance?

Maybe human engineers will someday construct a self-replicating machine. But if they do, I’m sure it will not happen until long after I am gone, and it will not show that life could have arisen through natural processes. It will only have shown that it could have arisen through design.

Furthermore, imagine that we did somehow manage to design, say, a fleet of cars with fully automated car-building factories inside, able to produce new cars — and not just normal new cars, but new cars with fully automated car-building factories inside them. Who could seriously believe that if we left these cars alone for a long time, the accumulation of duplication errors made as they reproduced themselves would result in anything other than devolution, and eventually could even be organized by selective forces into more advanced automobile models?

No, we could confidently predict that the whole process would grind to a halt after a few generations without intelligent humans around to fix the mechanical problems that would inevitably arise, long before we saw duplication errors that held any promise of advances.

The idea that it could even be remotely plausible that random mutations could produce major improvements relies completely on the observed but inexplicable fact that, while they are awaiting rare favorable mutations, living species are able to preserve their complex structures and pass them on to their descendants without significant degradation. We are so used to seeing this happen that we don’t appreciate how astonishing it really is.

But perhaps trying to imagine designing self-replicating cars, and trying to imagine that these cars could make progress through the accumulation of duplication errors, may help us realize that we really have no idea how living things are able to pass their current complex structures on to their descendants, generation after generation — much less how they evolve even more complex structures.

Lehigh University biochemist Michael Behe, in his 2019 book “Darwin Devolves,” writes:

Darwinian evolution proceeds mainly by damaging or breaking genes, which, counterintuitively, sometimes helps survival. In other words, the mechanism is powerfully de-volutionary. It promotes the rapid loss of genetic information. Laboratory experiments, field research, and theoretical studies all forcefully indicate that, as a result, random mutation and natural selection make evolution self-limiting. … Darwin’s mechanism works chiefly by squandering genetic information for short-term gain.

So, according to Behe, duplication errors, even when organized by selective forces, have the same effect on living species as we would expect them to have on self-replicating cars: only devolution and degradation.

Also, here we have not even discussed what is generally considered to be the main problem with Darwinism: its inability to explain the appearance of major new, irreducibly complex features that consistently appear suddenly in the fossil record. (I discussed this problem in my article “A Mathematician’s View of Evolution,” and in the second part of my video “Why Evolution is Different.”)

Trying to imagine that the accumulation of duplication errors made by our fleet of self-replicating cars could eventually result in conscious, intelligent machines might help us to realize that the evolution of intelligent beings, capable of designing computers, science texts, jet airplanes, and Apple iPhones, is an especially monumental and unsolved problem.

In my video “A Summary of the Evidence for Intelligent Design,” I began my fifth point with a picture of three children in the 1950s. One of them is me, the other two are not. I saw the world from inside one of these children. I saw every picture that entered through his eyes, I heard every sound that entered through his ears, and when he fell on the sidewalk, I felt his pain. How did I end up inside one of these children?

This is a question that rarely seems to trouble evolutionists. They talk about human evolution as if they were outside observers and never seem to wonder how they got inside one of the animals they are studying. They consider that human brains are just complicated computers, and so to explain how we got here they just have to explain how these mechanical brains evolved.

But even if they could explain how animals with mechanical brains evolved out of the primeval slime, that would leave the most important question — the one evolutionists never seem to even wonder about — still unsolved: How did I get inside one of these animals?

The argument for intelligent design could not be simpler or clearer: Unintelligent forces alone cannot rearrange atoms into computers and airplanes and nuclear power plants and smartphones, and any attempt to explain how they can must fail somewhere because they obviously can’t. Perhaps this is the best way to understand why explanations without design will never work, and why science may finally be starting to recognize this.

I didn't say it was "compelling evidence". I said the Genesis account of man being made from the same components as the earth is similar enough to our belief in the elements to not call creation belief wizardry like you do.

Genesis 2:4 is the beginning of a re-telling with more details for the creation of man. Verse 4 seems to create the setting of telling the story again with "this is the account", at a time point before water and plants (verse 5). After the water came (verse 6, presumably with plants too) we get the intimate detail of God creating man in verse 7 and early interaction with man the rest of the chapter.

Again, it's a matter of perspective as far as God creating the sun, moon, stars, and light. The first 2 verses of Genesis (Genesis 1:1-2) define the setting that the observing of creation takes place: from the surface. Think to how we believe planets are formed, first as blobs of dust and water particles. Imagine going back in time with a camera that could somehow record billions of years of video and planting it on the "surface" of Earth when Earth was just a blob of dust and water particles and everything was dark because of the dense atmosphere. Gradually, as the atmosphere thinned you'd see light before you'd see the sun (like a cloudy or rainy day when you have enough light to operate but can't see the sun). Then the water particles would start coalescing and you'd observe a clear distinction between atmosphere and water below, but probably still not be able to see the sun. Eventually the ground would appear from the surface and plants would have somewhere to grow (probably the first macro-organisms visible to our camera). Finally the atmosphere would thin out enough so that you could see the celestial bodies.

Even if it's not a definitive "proof" of creation, it ought to be enough to at least get attention and marvel and how accurate Genesis was (and the book of Job for that matter) thousands of years ago. Definitely enough there there to not completely discount it as "wizardry".

And that's not even getting into the math for natural selection being off by a factor in the thousands. If you want to talk about a belief system that requires religion... LOL

Guys like Coppedge have been calculating some of the simpler aspects of this theory for years, like doing the math for a polypeptide to spontaneously form into an amino acid being on the order of 10^-31, and since a simple single cell life would require hundreds of thousands of those, the chance goes towards 10^-310,000. When they do that calculation to see how long it would take, the universe needed to be 10^160 years old to come anywhere even near close to reasonable chance of life happening, just looking at those chemicals.

https://uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/evidence-for-irreducible-complexity-in-proteins/

To demonstrate that proteins are irreducibly complex you must demonstrate that the amino acids of the proteins are necessary for the protein to be functional and that removing or replacing the amino acids within the proteins will result in a loss of functionality for the protein.

“Mutations are rare phenomena, and a simultaneous change of even two amino acid residues in one protein is totally unlikely. One could think, for instance, that by constantly changing amino acids one by one, it will eventually be possible to change the entire sequence substantially… These minor changes, however, are bound to eventually result in a situation in which the enzyme has ceased to perform its previous function but has not yet begun its ‘new duties’. It is at this point it will be destroyed”
Maxim D. Frank-Kamenetski, Unraveling DNA, 1997, p. 72. (Professor at Brown U. Center for Advanced Biotechnology and Biomedical Engineering)

“A problem with the evolution of proteins having new shapes is that proteins are highly constrained, and producing a functional protein from a functional protein having a significantly different shape would typically require many mutations of the gene producing the protein. All the proteins produced during this transition would not be functional, that is, they would not be beneficial to the organism, or possibly they would still have their original function but not confer any advantage to the organism. It turns out that this scenario has severe mathematical problems that call the theory of evolution into question. Unless these problems can be overcome, the theory of evolution is in trouble.”
Problems in Protein Evolution:
per uncedu

Stability effects of mutations and protein evolvability. October 2009
Excerpt: The accepted paradigm that proteins can tolerate nearly any amino acid substitution has been replaced by the view that the deleterious effects of mutations, and especially their tendency to undermine the thermodynamic and kinetic stability of protein, is a major constraint on protein evolvability,,
– ncbi

Darwin’s God: Post Synaptic Proteins Intolerant of Change – December 2010
Excerpt: Not only is there scant evidence of intermediate designs leading to the known proteins, but the evidence we do have is that these proteins do not tolerate change.
– darwin’sgod

Extreme functional sensitivity to conservative amino acid changes on enzyme exteriors – Doug Axe
Excerpt: Contrary to the prevalent view, then, enzyme function places severe constraints on residue identities at positions showing evolutionary variability, and at exterior non-active-site positions, in particular.
http://nsmserver2.fullerton.ed.....lution.pdf

Corticosteroid Receptors in Vertebrates: Luck or Design? – Ann Gauger – October 11, 2011
Excerpt: Based on a realistic population genetics model, we calculate that the waiting time for a bacterial population to acquire seven specific mutations in a duplicated gene, none of which provide any functional benefit until all seven are present, is something like 10^27 years. That’s a ten with 27 zeros after it. To put this in perspective, the age of the universe is believed to be on the order of 10^10 years.
In response to our work, one critique was that we didn’t start with the right ancestral protein.,,,
,,, if merely changing binding preferences is hard, even when you start with the right ancestral form, then converting an enzyme to a new function is completely beyond the reach of unguided evolution, no matter where you start.
http://www.evolutionnews.org/2.....51801.html

Following the Evidence Where It Leads: Observations on Dembski’s Exchange with Shapiro – Ann Gauger – January 2012
Excerpt: So far, our research indicates that genuine innovation, a change to a function not already pre-existent in a protein, is beyond the reach of natural processes, even when the starting proteins are very similar in structure.
http://www.evolutionnews.org/2.....55171.html

“Enzyme Families — Shared Evolutionary History or Shared Design?” – Ann Gauger – December 4, 2014
Excerpt: If enzymes can’t be recruited to genuinely new functions by unguided means, no matter how similar they are, the evolutionary story is false.,,,
Taken together, since we found no enzyme that was within one mutation of cooption, the total number of mutations needed is at least four: one for duplication, one for over-production, and two or more single base changes. The waiting time required to achieve four mutations is 10^15 years. That’s longer than the age of the universe. The real waiting time is likely to be much greater, since the two most likely candidate enzymes failed to be coopted by double mutations.
We have now addressed two objections raised by our critics: that we didn’t test the right mutation(s), and that we didn’t use the right starting point. We tested all possible single base changes in nine different enzymes, Those nine enzymes are the most structurally similar of BioF’s entire family We also tested 70 percent of double mutations in the two closest enzymes of those nine.
Finally, some have said we should have used the ancestral enzyme as our starting point, because they believe modern enzymes are somehow different from ancient ones. Why do they think that? It’s because modern enzymes can’t be coopted to anything except trivial changes in function. In other words, they don’t evolve!
That is precisely the point we are making.
http://www.evolutionnews.org/2.....91701.html

“Shared Evolutionary History or Shared Design?” – Ann Gauger – January 1, 2015
Excerpt: The waiting time required to achieve four mutations is 10^15 years. That’s longer than the age of the universe. The real waiting time is likely to be much greater, since the two most likely candidate enzymes failed to be coopted by double mutations.
http://www.evolutionnews.org/2.....92291.html

Simply put, the irreducible complexity of proteins is demonstrated by showing that amino acids are interdependent and/or ‘context dependent’ in regards to producing a functional protein,

Moreover, Dr Gauger states that context dependent effects are found “at the level of primary sequence, secondary structure, and tertiary (domain-level) structure’ of proteins.

“Why Proteins Aren’t Easily Recombined, Part 2” – Ann Gauger – May 2012
Excerpt: “So we have context-dependent effects on protein function at the level of primary sequence, secondary structure, and tertiary (domain-level) structure. This does not bode well for successful, random recombination of bits of sequence into functional, stable protein folds, or even for domain-level recombinations where significant interaction is required.”
http://www.biologicinstitute.o.....ned-part-2

She is basically saying that there are three interlocking levels of irreducible complexity within proteins.

That ‘contextual’ information resides along the entire ‘irreducibly complex’ protein structure is also established here

Proteins with cruise control provide new perspective:
“A mathematical analysis of the experiments showed that the proteins themselves acted to correct any imbalance imposed on them through artificial mutations and restored the chain to working order.”
http://www.princeton.edu/main/...../60/95O56/

Kirk Durston states that the context dependency and/or irreducible complexity of the amino acids of a protein “reduce the number of possible functional protein sequences by many orders of magnitude”

(A Reply To PZ Myers) Estimating the Probability of Functional Biological Proteins? Kirk Durston , Ph.D. Biophysics – 2012
Excerpt (Page 4): The Probabilities Get Worse
This measure of functional information (for the RecA protein) is good as a first pass estimate, but the situation is actually far worse for an evolutionary search. In the method described above and as noted in our paper, each site in an amino acid protein sequence is assumed to be independent of all other sites in the sequence. In reality, we know that this is not the case. There are numerous sites in the sequence that are mutually interdependent, (i.e. context dependent), with other sites somewhere else in the sequence. A more recent paper shows how these interdependencies can be located within multiple sequence alignments.[6] These interdependencies greatly reduce the number of possible functional protein sequences by many orders of magnitude which, in turn, reduce the probabilities by many orders of magnitude as well. In other words, the numbers we obtained for RecA above are exceedingly generous; the actual situation is far worse for an evolutionary search.
http://powertochange.com/wp-co.....Myers_.pdf

How many of orders of magnitude are the chances reduced by the interdependency and/or irreducible complexity of a protein? The following paper on quantum criticality gives us a glimpse,,,

Quantum criticality in a wide range of important biomolecules
Excerpt: The permutations of possible energy levels of biomolecules is huge so the possibility of finding even one that is in the quantum critical state by accident is mind-bogglingly small and, to all intents and purposes, impossible.,, of the order of 10^-50 of possible small biomolecules and even less for proteins,”,,,
“what exactly is the advantage that criticality confers?”
https://medium.com/the-physics-arxiv-blog/the-origin-of-life-and-the-hidden-role-of-quantum-criticality-ca4707924552

In fact, since quantum entanglement/information falsified local realism in the first place, then the probability is zero. i.e. There is NO chance! Simply put, materialism has no beyond space and time cause to appeal to so as to explain ‘non-local’ quantum coherence in proteins. i.e. No possible cause equals no possible chance!

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