The Fundamentals of Universal Design
A cross examination of the theory of Darwinian evolution
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Here we examine the argumentation that supports the idea of Universal Design, i.e. that the Universe, the Earth, and Life on it arrived as a result of intentional order and arrangement.
This is also where the theory of Evolution is placed under the microscope, or perhaps more apt, into the dock of a judicial court, and subjected to a cross-examination!
An "Exquisite Symphonic Masterpiece"
This section examines a small selection of the most intricate entities recognised by modern scientific research, and includes a vital reason that begs your investigation. For example, DNA is often referred to as the "Blueprint for Life." While in many respects this is true, it also underscores the premise that DNA exhibits complexities (deliberate order, coordinated planning, and prepared (advanced) classification) that support the overall concept of intentional order and arrangement.
Note that the text below includes references to reputable scientific journals and the websites of internationally-respected scientists that provide background information for each of the points presented.
A Living Code
The above image is a representation of the "code" of DNA.
Each "piece" of this 3+ billion molecule strand is like a single letter in an immensely large and comprehensive instruction manual.
Only by :
- building all of these "letters" into meaningful words,
- and then each word into an intelligent sentence,
- and checking and coordinating the intention and meaning of each sentence,
can the entire "manual" make any sense in the construction and regular maintenance of a complete individual: whether human, animal, vegetable, or even bacteria.
Compare the human genome's 3 billion base pairs with that of a plant. A fork fern, that grows only on an island in New Caledonia, with the name Tmesipteris Oblanceolata, has 160 billion base pairs. That’s fifty times larger than human DNA. If unwrapped, one strand would be about 300 feet long, compared to human DNA which is a "mere" 6 feet long.
DNA is a complex and highly ordered "language," or code, and it produces the immense variety of life on earth. It not only defines a complete living organism, but, along with the cell in which it lives, DNA includes all the required information to maintain, repair, and replicate that organism. Could a blind process, with no concept of consciousness or purpose, produce this?
Compare this with the computer coding required to create an AI (Artificial Intelligence) system. One source says that an up to date AI can be composed of BILLIONS of lines of instructional code. Even a single drone in the US military consists of 3.5 MILLION lines of code. Even one coding error amongst these many lines could render the device completely useless. But with the help of intelligent (and expensive) programmers, these "bugs" are continually found and corrected until the code works according to requirements.
How was the coding, involved in DNA, constructed? Where did the mechanism come from to produce such complex functionality? Does this arrangement appear to be intentionally ordered to you?
Protein Molecules
This is an artist's representation of a protein molecule. Proteins are constantly being built and put to use within our bodies. But these molecules are very complex in their construction, and some are outrageously complicated.
After construction within the cell, they are folded into a specific shape using a set of rules ("laws") -- and the shape then determines the protein's function within the cell.
But one protein can have thousands of potential folds. The protein Titin (pronounced TIE-tin), the largest in the human body, has over 30,000!
And the possible combinations of shapes using large numbers of folds is well beyond "astronomical" (up to 10^300, a number with 300 zeros after it!)
Consider this: how long might it take you to count through all the combinations of folds for a molecule of this size; that is, simply to count up from 1 to the number 10^300 ? (See below under 'Protein Folding.')
And how fast do you think a modern supercomputer might be able to do it; that is, to merely count to that number?
The answer is: far longer than the age of the universe (in fact, many times over)!
Did you know that our bodies produce an average of almost 4 million proteins every second? And this is not mere "counting," but includes a complicated construction process that our bodies perform almost instantly without our conscious intervention!
Could our bodies guess the shape? With 200 million known types of proteins in nature to choose from, what do you think the chances are of this succeeding without intentional order and arrangement?
What do you think? Could an undirected process of chance that evolutionists support really manage such a complex, comprehensive yet complete and well-ordered task?
The Human Brain
Computer experts have been working recently on building their own equivalent of the human brain (which is, scientists say, the "most complex thing we have yet discovered in our universe.") Their plan is to model their creation on the neurons of the brain and their many interconnections, to try and obtain the type of complex activity that the human brain achieves.
More recently, however, a considerable blow has been delivered to this effort. It is now known that neurons are many times more complex than previously thought. There are around 86 billion of these in each human brain. But within every neuron there are thousands of microtubules (see below), each assisting in sending and receiving data communications millions of times faster than inter-neuron firing.
Not bad for a blind, purposeless process that has no concept of intentional order and arrangement!
This new research on the microtubules of the brain may lead to new information on how consciousness works (as famous mathematical physicist Sir Roger Penrose proposes). But even if it does not, this new light shed on the complexity of the human brain has had a growth spurt by many multiple orders of magnitude!
Considering the "wow" factor of the human brain, Neuroscientist Andrew Huberman said, in this YouTube interview: "You just don't see in animals the elaboration of parts of the brain involved in context and planning."
Note also, scientists have not so far been able to determine how the human brain functions on every level. They are using their own brains, of which they are clearly proud, and yet, even with coordinated effort, accumulated knowledge, computer assistance, and sophisticated equipment, they cannot build a near-matching (or even remotely close-matching) equivalent!
But suppose one day they do in fact succeed! What do you suppose this would actually prove?
. . . that high intelligence, an impressive array of skills, and carefully coordinated planning are required to effectively and successfully design and build a human brain!
This is reminiscent of a statement made by the late Carl Sagan, in his TV series Cosmos in the 1980's, where he said that, after DNA was no longer adequate to store our information requirements, "we slowly invented brains"!
Aquaporins
These tiny tubes control the flow of water in and out of your cells (among many other duties). Without them, cells would not survive.
They are actively involved in brain water balance, cell migration, cell proliferation, neural activity, pain, epidermal hydration, and the function of the eye and its central visual system.
Not bad for a blind, purposeless process that has no concept of intentional order and arrangement!
Microtubules
These are sometimes called "the cell's engineering language," and occur in most cells. However, they are formed very differently inside the brain's neurons. They are also known as the "cell's highways."
They transfer information millions of times faster than neuron-to-neuron transport. And every neuron in our brains contains many thousands of these (some estimate there could be billions of these at any one time that belong to each of our brain's neurons -- constructions that are continually being built, destroyed, and rebuilt in a microsecond, on demand!) (A rewarding study, if you are interested in microbiology, is how kinesins and dyneins quite literally "walk" along microtubules to carry out their very complex designed functions on behalf of the cell that created them.)
Think of the work that our brain does: The computations for just one hour, from billions of dynamic "highways" attached to each one of our billions of neurons, makes astronomical numbers look like a child's abacus!
Not bad for a blind, purposeless process that has no concept of intentional order and arrangement!
From Atoms to Galaxies
Imagine how enormous the list of natural items would be, if we include everything from the tiniest ultramicroscopic particles to the enormous galactic cosmic web! Every object in that progressive list is subject to intrinsic immutable “laws” or properties / parameters (the “laws of physics”) that are each independent and inviolable (as Scotty put it in the original Star Trek television series, “Captain, I cannot change the laws of physics!”) yet are all in perfect harmony like an enormous exquisite symphonic masterpiece.
Scientists struggle even to fully understand many of these laws, but they are unable to explain their origin -– i.e. although there are theories that attempt to describe the origin of “matter,” no serious attempt is made to explain empirically the origin of these critical, physical, fundamental “laws.”
Therefore, if the theory of evolution itself was in the dock, without a doubt the barrister would persist with the question, "Where did these laws come from"?
What is your conclusion?
The Protein Folding Problem
As remarked above, some protein chains are incredibly long, with as many as 10 to the power of 300 (10^300) potential folding combinations. How would you arrange the correct shape for these monster proteins?
An enthusiastic team of scientists have recently spent many years working on a computer system that, with some ingenious programming, engagement and feedback from the scientific community, a healthy dose of time, effort and good fortune, might just be able to reproduce what our bodies manage effortlessly (without our conscious intervention) in microseconds.
Their project, known as AlphaFold, uses "deep learning," a type of AI that is intended to mimic the way the human brain processes information. It was trained on a vast amount of data from known protein structures, with the goal of recognizing patterns and predicting new structures with high accuracy.
This impressive project has many potential benefits that scientists will no doubt endeavour to put into application in time.
However, from the perspective of design, and our current discussion, if the project eventually succeeds in completely solving the complex protein folding problem, what do you suppose this would actually prove?
. . . that high intelligence, an outstanding array of skills, and carefully coordinated planning are required to effectively and successfully design and manufacture proteins!
So how did an undirected process of blind chance accomplish this?
Theoretical Physicist Sabine Hossenfelder explains the complexity of the protein folding problem in this YouTube video.
Scientists, when discussing Albert Einstein's famous equation e=mc^2 explain that matter and energy are manifestations of the same thing. Therefore, instead of asking evolutionists, "Where did the matter come from in the first place?" the real question they should be considering is, "Where did the energy come from?"
What do you think?
Technical Notes (not for technophobes)
An Evasion of the Question
When an evolutionary scientist is approached with the question: "What is the origin of energy?" he or she often replies by explaining the "quantum effects" of "electrons in their orbitals" or the interactions between the component items that make up the nucleus of the atom. But this is, to put it pointedly, an evasion of the question.
The enquirer is asking for the ORIGIN of energy, and not HOW it is believed to work!
The "Singularity" is a "Mystery"
When physicists refer to the "big bang" they place its origin in what they sometimes call a "singularity," which is described as "an incredibly hot and dense point." In other words, ALL the matter that our immense universe consists of, was theoretically compressed to an infinitesimally small point (some use the term "infinitely small")! When asked where this hot and dense point came from and how it was even possible, they merely refer back to their favourite theory (in contrast to the fact that every physics student quickly learns: that energy can be neither created nor destroyed). Scientists (including the late Stephen Hawking) candidly admit that the origin of this "singularity" is a "mystery.". . .
The "Multiverse" Theory Does Not Solve the Problem
In view of the difficulties of the "singularity" explained above, one popular theory some physicists put forward is the "multiverse" theory. This proposes that matter/energy never really had a "beginning," but was spawned from the death of a previous universe; it also includes the theory that all possible events since the beginning of time have occurred in one or more existing universes! This is not a favourite theory of many physicists. It manages to avoid the knotty question of 'What is the origin of energy?' by pushing the problem on to a theoretical previous universe! Does that sound reasonable to you? Where does this "logical" conclusion end?
Supporters of evolution often say that, given *sufficient time* the complexity that we see in the universe can eventually come about. Unfortunately, given considerable time, even trillions of attempted universes, the "random" events required for "natural selection" to select, could not possibly produce the complexity of the universe and life within it. Why? Because it requires multi-tiered coordinated planning to accomplish what we observe and experience!
Where Did Life Come From?
A similar "pass the parcel" game that evolutionists play, is to claim that life arrived on earth from a comet or a meteorite originating in outer space. This also attempts to push the tricky problem of the origin of life to the cold, radiation-filled, uninviting regions of space! Does that sound reasonable to you?
If the spawning of life is so diverse in the universe, why is it that intelligent scientists, using their coordinated skills, accumulated knowledge, and sophisticated equipment, are unable to duplicate it? And how on earth, or how in the universe, could life have formed by undirected chance events somewhere in the depths of cold space, if scientists are unable to remotely duplicate the process in the warm, element rich, welcome environment of our earthly home?
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"The remarkable feature of physical
laws is that they apply everywhere,
whether or not you choose to believe in them."
- Astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson
Copyright © 2024, Michael A. Barber, Designomics™ -- All rights reserved.
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