Claim CB940:
Complex structures could not have arisen by chance.
Source:
Morris, Henry M., 1974. Scientific Creationism, Green Forest, AR: Master
Books, pp. 59-69.
Response:
- Evolutionists the world over are, and always have been, unanimous in
their agreement that complex structures did not arise by chance. The
theory of evolution does not say they did, and to say otherwise is to
display a profound absence of understanding of evolution. The novel
aspect that Darwin proposed is natural selection. Selection is the
very opposite of chance.
Selection of randomly introduced variation is known to be able to
produce complex formations, including functional circuits (Davidson
1997; Thompson 1996) and robots (Lipson and Pollack 2000).
Creationists have never proposed a reason to explain why the same
processes would not produce the same results in nature.
- The principles by which evolution works, including random variation and
recombination and natural selection, have proven successful and useful
for designing new drugs (Coghlan 1998), for designing better enzymes
for detergents (Pollack 2000), and, as genetic algorithms, for many
other applications.
References:
- Coghlan, Andy, 1998. A sexual revolution. New Scientist 160 (21
Nov.): 4. See also: Maxygen, 1998. When genes "breed" in the lab, a
surprising number of their offspring are supergenes. (Press release,
18 Nov. 1998)
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/1998-11/NS-WGIT-181198.php
- Davidson, Clive, 1997. Creatures from primordial silicon.
New Scientist 156 (15 Nov.): 30-34.
http://www.newscientist.com/hottopics/ai/primordial.jsp
- Lipson, Hod and Jordan B. Pollack, 2000. Automatic design and
manufacture of robotic lifeforms. Nature 406: 974-978.
- Pollack, Andrew, 2000. Selling evolution in ways Darwin
never imagined. New York Times, 28 Oct. 2000, business section.
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/10/28/business/28EVOL.html
- Thompson, Adrian, 1996. An evolved circuit, intrinsic in silicon,
entwined with physics.
http://www.cogs.susx.ac.uk/users/adrianth/ices96/paper.html
Further Reading:
Adami, C., C. Ofria and T. C. Collier, 2000. Evolution of biological
complexity. Proceedings of the National Academy of Science USA 97(9):
4463-4468.
Darwin, C., 1872. The Origin of Species, 1st Edition. Senate,
London.
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/origin.html
Dawkins, Richard, 1986. The Blind Watchmaker: why the evidence of
evolution reveals a universe without design. New York: Norton.
created 2001-2-17