MACHINAE MACHINAS CREANT
Machines Making Machines!
In the movie Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones (a film by George Lucas but now owned by Disney) there is a scene where the android character C-3PO enters a vast room where he sees androids manufacturing other androids like themselves. He then exclaims "Shut me down! Machines making machines"!
If you are not a fan of science fiction stories, you may consider this to be absurd, the idea that machines could one day be so advanced they acquire the capability of making exact copies of themselves, that in turn continue the process ad infinitum.
With the recent emergence of Artificial Intelligence, however, this may not be such an absurd idea after all. AI's are already making improvements to themselves; a process known as Recursive Self-improvement. Their achievements are not so impressive as yet, but note especially that there are many teams of programmers working to improve on this — and we will expand on this thought in this article.
Design Features in Nature
An achievement that is impressive, though, is the way nature manifests its own improvements. According to evolutionists, major "improvements" have occurred automatically, without the involvement of any purposeful intent or long-term planning.
When asked to present empirical evidence of these changes, though, the common response of evolutionists is to resort to "considerable time," too long for humans to have experienced experimentally.
But there are many major problems with this argumentation. To deal with one such problem, take a look at this list of creatures and try and determine what they all have in common:
- Butterflies
- Bees
- Beetles
- Dragonflies
- Birds
- Bats
- Pterosaurs
- Certain fish
- Certain squirrels
All of these creatures can be separated into six distinct groups: (1) insects, (2) birds, (3) bats, (4) dinosaurs, (5) fish, and (6) squirrels.
You have no doubt noticed that all these creatures are capable of flight (certain fish and some squirrels have flaps that enable them to fly short distances).
According to supporters of evolution, these six groups evolved — separately and independently — not only wings, but all the features required for flight.
Did the ability of flight really evolve gradually?
So the concept of wings, and all the features that make the provision of flight for the creature, have purportedly been bestowed at least six separate and distinct times during this extremely long evolutionary trail!
What is involved in developing the power of flight? We could ask any aircraft designer, and he or she would no doubt include the following:
Lift:
Allowance must be made in the creature's design for the force of air and air pressure on the surface of the wings and on the creature's body.
Thrust:
Knowledge of the energy required to obtain flight from a standstill is a necessity, along with the means to put that knowledge to use in the design of the creature's body and wing.
Drag:
The design of the creature must make allowance for the resistance that it will meet as it moves through the air.
Weight:
The creature must have the ideal weight — not too light, preventing adequate control of lift and flight, but not so heavy that the creature is unable to resist the force of gravity.
Wing Shape and Structure:
The shape and structure of the wing and the body must be carefully managed to allow for various methods of flight: gliding, soaring, full speed flight, etc.
Aerodynamics:
An understanding of aerodynamics is required to enable graceful, fatigue-free, efficient, and minimum effort flight.
Energy Efficiency:
A knowledge of the features that reduce the amount of energy used for flight is necessary, especially for creatures that migrate considerable distances — for example, lightweight bones, efficient muscle structure, etc. (Note the parellel discussion of the British Robin's ability to use quantum mechanics to navigate.)
It can be seen from the above, that simply "sprouting" wings, as the above artist impression implies, is a long way from providing a creature with the ability of flight. A considerable transformation, with many features, is required, that affect, not just "changing" arms into wings, but altering the structure of the creature's body, muscles, bones, wing design, etc.
And we have not even begun to discuss the many design features of a bird's wing: some subtle, some major, and some truly amazing!
Did you know that not all flight-capable bird's bones are hollow? Hollow bones enable a lighter body, required for the ability of flight. But due to the requirement of strength in certain areas, some bones are solid. How did evolution determine these requirements? And even if it did, how could it make the required changes to ensure that the bird has hollow bones in one place, but solid bones in another?
The evolutionist would answer: "by natural selection." This would mean that the fossil record should be abundant with examples of creatures with any one of the multitude of alternative bone, muscle, and wing structures, and countless combinations of these, that enabled evolution to ultimately "select" the right one.
But where is the evidence of these fossils?
If evolution did indeed "select" the many attributes of flight, then this begs the obvious question: Is flight necessary for survival?
If during the many growths of both hollow and solid bones, wing formations, feathers, muscles, etc., the creature kept failing to fly, could it not nevertheless survive?
Above we have mentioned that there are "many major problems" with the evolutionary view. This is best illustrated with the following story:
Imagine for a moment, a team of engineers who work at a plant belonging to a manufacturer that produces sophisticated spacecraft… let's say this company is an enormous Nasa-Google-Boeing kind-of conglomerate.
There are multiple departments in this vast organisation, which manufactures all of its own components: from the nuts and bolts to the fuselage, from the paint to the fuel, from the micro-fibres to the seats, from the microchips to the millions of lines of self-referencing computer code for the multiple software programs required for the spacecraft to function.
You approach a number of employees and ask them what work they do. They show you the component that they make, and they’re obviously very skilled.
You then ask them what the component does. But they have no idea what part their component plays in the finished product…
How do they know how to make the component? They follow a plan. A supervisor takes their finished product and assembles it, along with several thousand other components made by equally institutionalised employees, each beavering away in his or her own specially fitted area of the factory floor.
You question the supervisor, but he still does not know what role his department's assembled component plays in the finished product. You then ask him about the subcomponents that his part consists of, but he does not know how they work, he only supervises their manufacture according to the plan.
This occurs throughout five or six levels until a specialist team take each of the large final fully assembled parts and complete the spacecraft construction. You ask each of them about the components the craft is composed of, but they have no idea how the individual components work, they only follow the assembly plan and instructions they have been given. Also the pilot and crew of the spacecraft, although they can operate and fly the craft, there is a great deal they do not know about its inner workings, especially the complex, self-referencing computer code.
And of course, this spacecraft has all the sophistication that human endeavours can muster.
Could this complex control room, along with all the
features of the entire aircraft, arise without any intentional
design being involved?
Now let's look at a real-world example: Did you know that the NASA Space Shuttle's computer systems consist of almost half a billion lines of carefully constructed source code? Without this code, the spacecraft would not be able to function.
Did you also know that when Nasa employed a team of programmers to write this software, it took over six years to complete? During this time, extensive coding, testing, and re-coding was carried out, along with multiple validation routines until the software was "bug-free" and fit for purpose.
And this was copied to no less than five computers. Four of these were identical, so that up to three computer failures would still allow the craft to function!
If all the fundamental elements that the Space Shuttle consists of (metals, carbon, wood materials, etc.) were available in a large pile, how long do you think it would take for these elements to come together, without any intentional order and arrangement, and produce a fully working, fully computer coded spacecraft?
This may sound like an absurd illustration. But this is, in reality, a very inadequate analogy! A single human cell has much more complexity than a Space Shuttle, and yet it functions without any human intervention. And our bodies contain at least 40 trillion of them!
Now consider these questions regarding the spacecraft story:
- What use is the plastic coating around the electrical wiring that permeates this spacecraft, unless it is graded appropriately, precision moulded, and correctly fitted for insulation?
- What use is the electrical wire unless it is connected to the appropriate channels and interfaces?
- What use are the conduits and channels unless they lead to the power source?
- What use is the power source unless it is properly configured, calibrated, active, and provided with the means to keep it topped-up with the energy it requires to function?
And, of course, these questions cover all the components in the above construction project, from the very tiny to the very large, involving electrical distribution, engine operation, environmental controls, fluid transport, air channelling, communications, comfortable and ergonomic furniture, etc.
Could a random pile of elements, by themselves ...
... ever produce this, including its computer coding?
Now let's return again to another real-world example:
How does all of this relate to the argumentation put forward by evolutionists discussed earlier? Take a look at the article Multi-tiered Coordinated Planning, and then consider the questions below that relate to the highly complex method that our cells use for cellular respiration — a process known as the Electron Transport Chain, which takes place at an ultramicroscopic level:
The following detail of this process is not intended as a technical explanation: a simplified review is all that is required to serve our purpose here.
In the initial stage of this process, proteins within a membranous layer of the cell hand over one of the smallest particles that exist, an electron, to an area known as Complex I.
Before we continue, note that without this first event occurring, the subsequent stages in the Electron Transport Chain would be of no value.
Therefore, consider carefully these questions :
- At this stage, do these proteins somehow "know" why this transfer is taking place?
- Did the process of evolution "select" this procedure from others that were occurring at the same time?
- Or did evolution "intentionally design" this hand-over procedure?
- When evolution manufactured or designed or selected this procedure, was there, at some level, an awareness of the culmination (or purpose) of all the stages of this Electron Transport Chain process?
- Did evolution "know" why this single procedure was important; that the end result would be, not only beneficial for the cell, but vital for the life that the cell is sustaining?
Above we have described the initial procedure involving just Complex I. There are other similar procedures that involve Complex II, Complex III, Complex IV, and an additional procedure for Complex V. In each case, the same electron is being handed over for the next procedure to manage.
Note that these Complexes are not proteins, but they are part of the structure of the inner lining of the mitochondria. This means that each of these structures had to be specifically designed to perform its respective function. Or did they begin as "holes" in the lining and progress to something that happens to fulfil the requirements of this complex process? If they did indeed develop gradually by some evolutionary growth, how can this be proved empirically, or the process of their "adaptation" even be explained by logical reasonable steps?
If any one of these procedures is missing or fails to function, the entire process is rendered useless!
And the above is a vastly simplified review of this complicated process.
When it is complete, the cell obtains much needed energy. And this is one purpose of the Electron Transport Chain's many procedures.
- Would you say that all of these procedures evolved over a considerable amount of time?
- How could the blind, purposeless process of evolution accomplish a task of this complexity?
- Did evolution somehow "know" that capturing an electron would enable functional proteins to make use of its energy on behalf of the cell, thereby maintaining the entire body?
- How could the cell's proteins be altered, or new proteins commissioned, to ensure that this capture took place, and that the proteins would "know" how to go about the task?
- If all of this complexity did indeed evolve over considerable time, how did the body function in the earlier times with an immature and as yet incomplete process that is intended to provide vital energy?
- How could the entire process work at all unless all parts and all supporting procedures were fully in place and functioning adequately?
- And finally, how could the process be implemented at all, if the required energy to create the process was not yet made available by this very process — a Catch-22 situation?
And, of course, this is just one process involving a small selection of the billions of microscopic machines that each of our trillions of body cells produce and maintain. And they all function for the benefit of the cell ... each cell functions for the benefit of a body organ, and each organ functions for the benefit of our body as a whole; just like the individual components of our illustrative spacecraft above.
The complexity of many of the cell's
"machines" is mind-boggling.
CONCLUSION
And finally, the choice of the title of this current article, Machines Making Machines, is now more apparent.
Take as an example a talented engineer who builds an android capable of making copies of itself, as depicted in the image at the beginning of this article. He would no doubt achieve worldwide acclaim and adoration. But the android does not take the praise. It was the engineer who applied his intelligence, skill, ingenuity, along with planning and foresight, to produce his famous invention.
Now take a real-world example: When a couple marry and bear a child, do they take the credit for the human life that results from their union? Of course, their family and friends congratulate them on the new arrival and are more than delighted that they have a child. But the reality is that the parents are only passing on something that was handed down to them — life! The complex "mechanics" of the development of this new life, is not in the parent's remit! They did not control how the baby's cells were constructed, nor did they make them work together to form the beautiful child that they come to love.
The development occurs internally, and is pre-programmed into all human cells. And this cycle of new human life has continued with parents, grandparents, and on into the distant past.
But where did the original life come from, for this marvellous process to begin?
The same arguments can be applied to the individual human cell. It has the remarkable ability to make a copy of itself, which in turn makes other copies, until a complete human being is formed. But, taking this back in time, how was the original cell planned, developed, and manufactured? How was it programmed to make copies of itself?
Would you not agree that this constitutes intentional order and arrangement?
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