The Bible: Commentary and Controversy

Okay. Let’s take a short break and talk evolution, DNA, LUCA, survival of the fittest, and all that stuff.

LUCA, the Last Universal Common Ancestor, is what we all sprang from, according to common scientific belief. It was a small, single-celled organism with a ring-shaped coil of DNA floating freely within the cell, like modern bacteria, and a set of 355 genes. It was the final evolution of the building blocks that had developed in the chaos existing more than 4 billion years ago.

That’s been duplicated. Almost.

In 1953 scientists imitated the earth’s early atmosphere by mixing hydrogen, carbon monoxide, ammonia, methane and water vapor in a glass flask and then subjecting it to ultraviolet light and electrical discharges. Within a few weeks (not even the blink of an eye on a cosmic scale) complex molecules formed in the mixture, including several amino acids, the building blocks of proteins, which are in every cell of every living organism. So the necessary ingredients (the building blocks) were falling into place.

But, of course, it was not alive, because for life to occur in this inert result of several chemical reactions, a further step is required – a vital piece needs to be added. Out of millions of compounds, formed over millions of years, only one in particular provides that missing ingredient – the crucial piece necessary for the emergence of life.

That missing ingredient is DNA, our genetic code, quite accurately called “the building blocks of life.”

Technically speaking, DNA (or deoxyribonucleic acid) is the hereditary material in humans and almost all other organisms. Nearly every cell in a person’s body has the same DNA, located in the cell nucleus. The information in DNA is stored as a code made up of four chemical bases: adenine (A), guanine (G), cytosine (C), and thymine (T). The order, or sequence, of these bases determines the information available for building and maintaining an organism, similar to the way in which letters of the alphabet appear in a certain order to form words and sentences. Human DNA consists of about 3 billion bases, and more than 99 percent of those bases are the same in all people.

For simplicity’s sake, think of it as code, the kind used to write computer programs. Binary code has only two building blocks, or bases: one and zero. The way they are arranged tells the computer what to do. Human DNA is a very long and intricate “code,” containing more than 3 billion bases.

So how did this microscopic single-celled animal come to have a complex set of instructions telling it what to become and how to reproduce? Well, no one really knows. Some say it could have started with RNA, which is very similar to DNA, but less stable. Of course the question then  becomes “where did RNA come from?” There are some very astute and complicated explanations, but the simple answer is we don’t know and may never know where DNA and RNA came from, or why they came, or how animals began using them.

Bummer.

Believe me, the science world is feverishly dedicated to proving that life happened by accident. Otherwise they might have to accept the possibility of intelligent design, and that is totally unacceptable to them.

Well, that’s enough about DNA for the moment. We’ll get back to it.

Now let’s talk about evolution.

Of course Darwin knew nothing about genetics, and DNA, and so on. I believe he kind of got it right, anyway, but also got it very wrong. His whale story is a perfect example. According to Live Science, “In the first edition of The Origin of Species in 1859, Darwin speculated about how natural selection could cause a land mammal to turn into a whale. As a hypothetical example, Darwin used North American black bears, which were known to catch insects by swimming in the water with their mouths open:

‘I can see no difficulty in a race of bears being rendered, by natural selection, more aquatic in their structure and habits, with larger and larger mouths, till a creature was produced as monstrous as a whale,’ he speculated.”

The idea didn’t go over very well with the public. Darwin was so embarrassed by the ridicule he received that the swimming-bear passage was removed from later editions of the book.”

Darwin, without realizing it at the time, basically says DNA changes as a result of the environment, such as changes in beak shape in Galapagos finches in response to available food sources.

History World provides this explanation.

“Chance, on which the theory of evolution depends, is exceptionally hard to believe in. But there is strong evidence, from the fossil record and from DNA, that chance has indeed brought us the amazing diversity of life.

Accidental changes in the message carried by the DNA have again and again led to altered or mutated versions of living things. If, as occasionally happens, the mutation brings an advantage of some kind, then the mutant creature is better equipped to pass on its new version of the DNA code to future generations.

Its descendants will seem, at the first few removes, a variant of the same species. Later, after many more mutations, they may have evolved into an evidently different animal. “

In other words, changes happen chaotically, rather than in response to the environment, and when a change is beneficial, it sticks. Which fits with Darwin’s survival of the fittest dogma.

Because I am who I am, I cannot believe that a bear became a whale in order to get more to eat. I also cannot believe a mouse turned into a bat for the same reason. But that’s just me.

However, I also have trouble believing in a set of wings suddenly sprouting on a mutant mouse, and proving to be beneficial. Obviously if the “wings” in the mutant mouse were not developed enough for it to fly, they would not prove to be beneficial. The “wings” would have to develop, generation by generation, into paraphernalia that would permit the mouse to fly. And because with the development of the wings apparently came blindness, a powerful sonar system would have to be added, so the bat could catch its food and not run into things. That’s a lot of mutation for a simple rodent.

However, there is at least one species of mouse that is blind and uses a sonar system. So it seems only reasonable that this is the mouse (or its equivalent five hundred million years ago) that managed to sprout wings. Otherwise, the whole evolution from mouse to bat is not just improbable, but impossible.

Let’s say you have a living, seeing mouse, and that creature somehow develops “wings,” meaning the third, fourth, and fifth digits grow abnormally long, with webbing between them. Okay, so what? It all of a sudden discovers it can fly? That’s a remote possibility, but a possibility. Maybe it falls off a cliff and finds out it can glide. From there it’s a short step to purposeful flight.  So everything’s good, right? It flies around all over the place and grabs bugs en volante. Why in the world would it then need to develop a sonar system?

Now suppose you have a living, blind mouse, the result of generations and generations of its ancestors living in dark caves, or only going out at night, or being born blind, or whatever. Over time it develops wings, and spends its life bumping into walls and trees because it can’t see. The development of wings in a blind mouse would be the first step to extermination.

But imagine the blind mouse, sitting in its cave, or somewhere in the black of night, listening carefully for the sound of something it can eat, and developing the ability to tell that sound from the sound of something that will eat it. Its hearing becomes more and more acute, and eventually it develops a method of sending a signal and analyzing what comes back. Bingo. The rudiments of a sonar system. From there, the development of wings would not be suicidal, but could actually become useful over time. As I understand the theory of evolution/survival of the fittest, I still don’t understand how the wings could be anything but a handicap until they’re fully developed, but maybe that’s just a problem of my small brain.

So let’s talk simians and homo sapiens. You’re a gorilla, or an ape, 500 million years or so ago. You have plenty to eat, you have little to fear from predators, you’re strong and quick, and life is pretty good. Why then would you develop into a weaker, slower being, surrounded by predators, with not enough easily accessible food? Now, if you knew you were going to develop into full-blown Man, with enough brain to solve problems, develop tools, plant crops, etc., etc., it would make more sense. But where is the granular advancement from ape to man? I don’t see it.

Thomas Henry Huxley, a colleague of Darwin, was perhaps the first to try to identify humanity’s roots using well-reasoned evolutionary thinking. In his 1863 book Evidence as to Man’s Place in Nature, Huxley said it was “quite certain”, anatomically speaking, that humans are most similar to gorillas and chimpanzees. One of these two must be humanity’s sister species, although Huxley was not sure which.

Wait. They are anatomically similar, so they must be sister species? What a lot of twaddle. The fact that two beings are “anatomically similar” in no way guarantees that one evolved from the other.

But right or wrong, that’s simply not important. The important question is “Why would simians evolve into a lesser creature?” To me this is not “evolution,” or “survival of the fittest.” It is a random mutation that worked.

We only have two choices, as I see it. Either evolution progressed through survival of the fittest – that is, a change occurred that was in retrospect foreseeable – and it benefited the mutant, or change happened chaotically, with no regard to positive progression, and the change benefited the mutant.

Now let’s look at another possible aspect of DNA, which I’m sure will be excoriated by scientists, religionists, and pretty much everyone else.

First of all, let’s go back to the comparison between DNA and computer code, and take it a step further. Probably the biggest advance in computers today is the study of artificial intelligence. Basically this means the computer inputs data, analyzes it, and makes choices based on probabilities. The key, of course, is the parameters set at the start. Asimov’s laws, for example.

So suppose the parameter set for DNA is to improve the species’ lifestyle. Wow! Everything fits, now. More food in the sea than on land? Start developing a sea creature. Blind mouse? Start developing a sonar system. Beak too big to get enough food? Make it smaller and more pointed.

No, DNA can’t look at the future and make changes based on it, but it might be able to assemble data and make changes based on empirical evidence. Question: did RNA develop into DNA because it wasn’t stable enough to make changes that might improve the species? And did it change to incorporate a more durable type of artificial intelligence? And was it designed and placed there in the first place by “an intelligent creator?”

What do you think?