Tuesday, 4 July 2017

More on My Problem with Evolution



At http://gordonfeil.blogspot.ca/2017/04/charles-vs-charles.html I discussed one of the issues I have with the theory of evolution: the complexity of life. How could the symbioses of today have gradually and incrementally happened?  When Darwin formulated his theory, knowledge of how the mechanisms and components of life work was scant compared to today’s understanding. Evolution might have made sense to me if I lived back then.

My specialty is business administration, not biology or chemistry, but I do have a brain and I do read, and I notice problems. Here is one example of what I mean.  As I understand DNA, it is a very long sequence of “letters” that contain information that is used in the development of the cells and body of which it is a part, and this information becomes instrumental in determining the development and functioning of those cells and body.  This lengthy sequence is fairly one dimensional on the face of it.  That is, if that’s all that happens. But apparently a letter in one part can affect the operation of a non-adjacent letter located somewhere else in the strand, so that the interaction of the two has consequences beyond those of each individual letter. This is just the beginning. There is a third dimension also: DNA doesn’t lie as a long straight strand. It bunches into what we might call a ball, and wherever a portion of the strand is close enough to another portion, these portions modify the effects of each other, with new effects that wouldn’t exist without those proximities.  Then comes the fourth dimension. Sometimes, this ball will shift and portions will twist and open up and then come together again so that letters are now affecting other letters, and this action happens when a problem has arisen and the body needs a solution to it that can be guided by DNA.  After the problem has resolved, the ball repositions into something like it was beforehand.  Frankly, this all speaks to me of design…..of INTENTION. Anything else stretches my credibility.

Another problem I have with evolution is that is takes time that I don’t see manifested in geological strata. How often I have seen canyons in which layers of sediment deposits lie one on the other. If they were laid down over the hundreds of millions of years geologists claim, I would expect to see two things that I do not see. First, I would expect to see signs of erosion of each layer since it would have been exposed to the elements before the new layer was deposited. I don’t see that.  Further, I notice that there are waves in the strata (they are not totally flat) and that the angle of the “surface” of each wave relative to the horizontal is consistent with the angles of sand waves under water (< 25 degrees) rather than sand waves on land (> 35 degrees). It appears to me that the huge layers of sediment that we call the geological column were laid down very quickly by hydraulic action. Not in millions of years, but maybe in minutes. 

Further, we get anomalies like soft tissue of dinosaurs being found, such as the non-unique instance of the Triceratops tissue found at Hell Creek in Montana. I’m talking about tissue that can be stretched and bent, not fossilized material. There is no means by which such tissue could survive 65 million years.

Unquestionably, evolution happens in the sense of a species developing characteristics and abilities. Micro-evolution. We see it demonstrated in many species. To me this attests to a design that envisioned various problems that could arise and included potential solutions that them.


I am just scratching the surface of the problems with evolution. I think people need to think more. Question more. Knowledge is subject to fads.


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