I’m sure you remember the phrase from physics class that a
body in motion tends to stay in motion and a body at rest tends to stay at
rest. This is known as Newton’s First Law of Motion.
This has an interesting application to recent research on
evolution. As you can imagine, it takes a certain amount of energy to produce
something new and different. And mutating new systems is the essence of how
evolution creates new species.
If forces are in a state of equilibrium, then generally
there will not be change. Darwinism requires that there be change over time and
therefore there must be an input of energy.
Here is the definition of equilibrium.
A condition in which all influences
acting cancel each other, so that a static or balanced situation results. In
physics, equilibrium results from the cancellation of forces acting on an
object. In chemistry, it occurs when chemical reactions are proceeding in such
a way that the amount of each substance in a system remains the same. [1]
In a July, 2014, peer reviewed article in the journal Complexity, researchers Snoke, Cox, and
Petcher have realized that the Theory of Evolution has a major problem. [2]
Their conclusion was this.
The bottom line seems to be that
whatever cause generated the biological features we observe, unguided Darwinian
evolution is not it. [3]
They used a computational model to simulate the processes
that must take place for evolution to be true. The Theory of Evolution says
that Natural Selection chooses one from among many variations in a survival of
the fittest process. The essential point to discuss here is that there must
first exist the many variations for Natural Selection to be able to act on
something.
If you don’t have many variations already existing, then the odds of Natural Selection working successfully become totally
impossible.
In order to get many variations, there is necessarily an
energy requirement. The researchers chose a certain level of energy as the amount needed to make a new variation and then tested to
see what the results would be.
[T]here is an additional energy
cost to increased complexity. ... In real systems, building new systems is
costly, and the cost of carrying along useless or redundant systems is one of
the arguments for the efficiency of existing living systems, as excess baggage
is dropped as too costly. [4]
So in other words, once a good design exists, it tends to be
in equilibrium and it will continue. It will not develop other systems because
of the extra energy required to develop them. Adding new variations onto an
already functioning and efficient system would require extra energy that the
organism would tend to select against.
As an example, how do you evolve a human pelvis from a
monkey pelvis? The orientation, structure, and strength points are very
different because a human walks upright. The monkey pelvis works fine for the
monkey. Why would a partially human pelvis and a partially monkey pelvis be
remotely a good idea from an efficiency perspective?
You could make the same argument for legs, feet, arms,
hands, and on and on, trying to develop a monkey into a human.
The model showed that in most cases, no changes would take
place in a working system. It also showed another problem.
If you plug a number into the model that would represent a
low cost of energy in order to make a new variation, then you would indeed get
lots of variations. This is necessary for Natural Selection to be able to
operate. However, many variations when the energy cost is low would also be carried forward even if they
did not have a functional purpose. This ultimately caused the organism to fail
from the burden of useless vestigial systems.
In order for Natural Selection to function, the theory says
there have to be a lot of systems to choose from. But the modeling based on
energy costs demonstrates that in reality too many of those various systems
would not be discarded. The organism would eventually have to fail from the
burden.
There was no stable energy cost point for getting to the scenario where Natural
Selection could work its magic. They either got no evolution or too much useless evolution
which Natural Selection could not deal with.
The analysis of the energy cost of producing variations
showed this:
There are two competing processes.
On one hand, the energy cost of carrying vestigial systems makes them weakly
deleterious, not neutral, which tends to reduce their number. Conversely,
without stabs in the dark, that is, new systems which might eventually obtain
new function but as yet have none, no novelty can ever occur, and no increase
of complexity. Thus, if the energy cost of vestigial systems is too high, no
evolution will occur. [5]
So here is the big problem. The tendency it turns out is to stay in equilibrium once an efficient
system is attained. From there, no evolution occurs. The energy cost of many variations is too high. Thus no new systems tend
to develop and no further evolution takes place.
When researchers tested what would happen if only a small
amount of energy cost was needed to produce lots of variations. They found that
this would produce the many new systems that are needed, however, this would
also lead to many left over systems that are useless. Over time more and more useless
systems would accumulate. Eventually that would cause the organism to die out
from lack of efficiency.
But trying lots of new things mean
you cannot weed out slightly deleterious traits. Over time unhelpful traits
accumulate. Eventually such mutations pile up to an extent that the population
reaches a crisis point, and crashes. The junk has become an unbearable burden.
The organisms go extinct. [6]
I like this new phrase “arrival of the fittest” in the next
quote. Before there can ever be “survival of the fittest”, there has to be
“arrival of the fittest” on the scene. Science is now having a problem
identifying how systems could even “arrive”, let alone be in a position to be
selected.
Many scientists now recognize the
insufficiency of the classic Darwinian story to account for the appearance of
new features or innovations in the history of life. They focus on other
theories to account for remarkable differences between genomes, the appearance
of novel body plans, and genuine innovations like the bat's wing, the mammalian
placenta, the vertebrate eye, or insect flight, for example. They realize that
the traditional story of population genetics (changes in allele [7] frequencies
in populations due to mutation, selection, and drift) cannot account for
"the arrival of the fittest" and not just the "survival of the
fittest." [8]
Let me repeat the conclusion of that peer-reviewed article.
Please pass it on to others so that they too will be aware of what researchers
themselves are more and more aware of.
The bottom line seems to be that
whatever cause generated the biological features we observe, unguided Darwinian
evolution is not it. [9]
As research continues, even stubborn believers are going to
have to give up on Darwinian unguided evolution. The end has to come sooner or
later and it will be scientists who pull the plug on Darwinian Evolution.
There must have been some intelligence far greater than ours
to engineer the world around us.
There must be God.
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[1] The American Heritage® New Dictionary of Cultural
Literacy, Third Edition, Copyright © 2005 by Houghton Mifflin Company.
[2] Snoke, David W.; Cox, Jeffrey; and Petcher, Donald,
"Suboptimality and complexity in evolution", Complexity Journal,
Volume 21, Issue 1, http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/cplx.21566/abstract
[3] Luskin, Casey, "Peer-Reviewed Paper Reveals
Darwin's Unavoidable Catch-22 Problem", December 27, 2015, http://www.evolutionnews.org/2015/12/6_of_our_top_st101881.html
[4] Snoke, David W.; Cox, Jeffrey; and Petcher, Donald,
"Suboptimality and complexity in evolution", Complexity Journal,
Volume 21, Issue 1, http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/cplx.21566/abstract
[5] Snoke, David W.; Cox, Jeffrey; and Petcher, Donald,
"Suboptimality and complexity in evolution", Complexity Journal,
Volume 21, Issue 1, http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/cplx.21566/abstract
[6] Luskin, Casey, "Peer-Reviewed Paper Reveals
Darwin's Unavoidable Catch-22 Problem", December 27, 2015, http://www.evolutionnews.org/2015/12/6_of_our_top_st101881.html
[7] Allele: one of two or more alternative forms of a gene
that arise by mutation and are found at the same place on a chromosome.
[8] Gauger, Ann, "Waiting for Mutations: Why Darwinism
Won't Work", Sept. 23, 2015, http://www.evolutionnews.org/2015/09/waiting_for_mut099631.html
[9] Luskin, Casey, "Peer-Reviewed Paper Reveals
Darwin's Unavoidable Catch-22 Problem", December 27, 2015, http://www.evolutionnews.org/2015/12/6_of_our_top_st101881.html
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