The ID Report

By Robert Deyes
ARN Correspondent

"'Orchids are Rube Goldberg machines; a perfect engineer would certainly have come up with something better'". So spoke the late paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould who attributed the blunderings of nature to the limited powers of evolution (Ref 1). Richard Dawkins rode Gould's coattails with his own favorite contraption- the laryngeal nerve: "It starts in the head, goes down into the chest, loops round the aorta, then goes straight back into the head again. In a giraffe this detour must be wasteful indeed" (Ref 1).

Proponents of the 'imperfect design' argument state that an intelligent designer should have been able to construct living forms that were both free of flaws and optimal in their design (Ref 2). These same proponents use their own menagerie of apparent imperfections in the way that biological systems are organized to buttress their position against the existence of such a designer (Ref 2). Accompanying such a position is a blatant lack of objective reasoning. Why? Because we cannot assume that living forms are imperfect simply because their designs are different from those which we personally would have chosen (Ref 2). Moreover, the imperfect design premise overlooks the trade-offs that are often necessary to ensure the better design of a larger system (Ref 3). Philosopher Stephen Meyer hammered home this salient point several years ago in an interview with writer and former legal editor of the Chicago Tribune Lee Strobel. According to Meyer:

"Engineers know all designs require optimizing a whole suite of parameters, and so tradeoffs are inevitable to create the best overall result...One illustration that's sometimes given is the laptop...You could look at the screen and say, 'Bad design; it should have been bigger'. You could look at the memory and say, 'Bad design; should have had more capacity'. You could look at the keyboard and say, 'Bad design; should have been easier to use'. But the engineer isn't supposed to be creating the best screen, the best memory, and the best keyboard- he's supposed to be producing the best computer he can given certain size, weight, price, and portability requirements. Could the screen be bigger? Yes, but then portability suffers. Could the computer have more memory? Sure, but then the cost goes too high." (Ref 3)

Darwin of course developed his own flavor of the imperfect design argument by dedicating an entire section of the Origin Of Species to the apparent 'rudiments' of nature (Ref 4). He proposed that, through natural selection, anatomical structures that were in some way 'injurious' or of no use to the survival of an organism would over time diminish in size (Ref 4). Darwin challenged the special creationist viewpoint of the day which maintained that rudimentary organs had been created to "complete the scheme of nature" (Ref 4). Evolutionists today are quick to claim that the human anatomy is abounding in features that exhibit no apparent utility - little toes, ear muscles and male facial hair to name a few favorites. Just like Darwin they relegate these same features to nothing more than vestiges of a former state (Ref 5). Of course in so doing the burden of proof lies with evolutionists, who must demonstrate unequivocally an absence of function- a task that, as biophysicist Cornelius Hunter has argued, is practically impossible to fulfill:

"It is difficult to show that a particular organ lacks value. Whether we are talking about an organ that is thought to contribute little to overall fitness or one thought to be inefficient, our failure to find positive value does not imply that it is nonexistent. One cannot conclude something does not exist unless one has looked in all possible places at all possible times. In fact, the claim that an organ is vestigial [rudimentary] can only be rejected. When we find that the organ makes a positive contribution to fitness, then we disprove the vestigial claim, but it is practically impossible to prove the claim by failing to find such a contribution. It is not surprising that the history of vestigial organs involves shrinking lists." (Ref 6, p.32)

Discussions on functionality as relates to DNA only serve to demonstrate the underlying principle that just because a component of a system is not operationally essential for the system to function does not mean that it is operationally functionless. A study headed by Barbara Knowles from the Jackson Laboratory revealed just how small pieces of DNA called transposons can generate novel messenger RNAs that regulate oocyte and embryonic development (Ref 7). Transposons are fascinating to the molecular biologist for the simple reason that they occupy about 30% of the entire human genome (Ref 7). Historically transposons have been thought of by some as harmful parasites- 'junk' DNA that served no purpose other than to hitch an evolutionary ride through the eons (Ref 7).

Knowles' work was built on the pioneering discoveries of Barbara McClintock who in the 1950s determined that transposons could regulate genes in maize (Ref 7). In all, such efforts have put the 'junk' hypothesis in its place, revealing novel regulatory functions for stretches of DNA that were previously considered to be of little benefit. Intergenic DNA has also been shown to play a part in protecting chromosomes and might serve a role in genome expansion (Ref 8). That is not to say that certain DNA sequences are not dispensable. Indeed Lawrence Berkeley's Edward Rubin has shown that mice missing about 1% of their genome suffered no ill effects of health (Ref 9). Yet simply because large chunks of DNA can be removed from a genome, does not mean that they serve no function.

As a colleague recently reminded me, one would probably not notice if pianist Jacques Loussier missed a note in his glorification of Vivaldi's 'Four Seasons' or if Placido Domingo forgot a couple of words in his rendition of Verdi's 'Il Trovatore'. But one would almost certainly notice if Herbert von Karajan had left out a few baton strokes while conducting the accompanying orchestral scores for both these pieces. Still, we cannot ascribe an unnecessary or trivial role to Loussier's omitted notes or Domingo's forgotten words simply because their function does not stare us in the face. Both still play an important part in assuring artistic quality.

We can conclude that much of the so called 'science' of evolutionary theory is based not on cogent arguments but on personal philosophies that exclude design on the basis of methodological boundaries that need not exist.

Literature Cited

1. Richard Dawkins (2003), A Devil's Chaplain, Published by Weidenfeld and Nicolson, London, UK, p.192

2. Michael J Behe (1996), Darwin's Black Box- The Biochemical Challenges to Evolution, 1st Edition Published by Simon and Schuster, New York, pp. 222-225

3. Lee Strobel (2004), The Case For A Creator: A Journalist Investigates Scientific Evidence That Points Towards God, Zondervan Publishers, Grand Rapids, Michigan, pp. 87-88

4. Charles Darwin (1859), The Origin of Species By Means of Natural Selection Or The Preservation of Favored Races In the Struggle For Survival Modern Library Paperbacks Edition (1998), New York, pp. 601-609

5. Jocelyn Selim (2004), Useless Body Parts, Discover Magazine, June 2004, Volume 25, Number 6, pp. 42-45

6. Cornelius Hunter (2001), Darwin's God, Evolution and the Problem of Evil, Brazos Press, A division of Baker Book House Company, Grand Rapids, Michigan

7. Anne E. Peaston, Alexei V. Evsikov, Joel H. Graber, Wilhelmine N. de Vries, Andrea E. Holbrook, Davor Solter, and Barbara B. Knowles (2004), Retrotransposons Regulate Host Genes in Mouse Oocytes and Preimplantation Embryos, Developmental Cell, Volume 7, pp. 597–606

8. Alfredo Flores (2009), Junk DNA Proves To Be Highly Valuable, See http://www.ars.usda.gov/is/pr/2009/090602.htm

9. Roxanne Khamsi (2004), Mice do fine without 'junk DNA', Nature News, 20th October, 2004, See http://www.nature.com/news/2004/041020/full/news041018-7.html