Darwin's Doubt: The Sudden Emergence of the Life of Beings and the Argument for Intelligent Design - Author's Introduction

Darwin's Doubt: The Sudden Emergence of the Life of Beings and the Argument for Intelligent Design - Author's Introduction When people hear the term “information revolution” today, the first thing they have in mind is silicon chips, software codes, mobile phones and supercomputers, rarely thought of as being about small single-celled organisms or about the origin of animal life. As I wrote these words in the summer of 2012, I was standing at the end of a narrow medieval street in Cambridge, England, where more than half a century ago an information revolution began that greatly affected biology. The spark of this revolution was sparked by two unexpected worlds, but the history of science is remembered: Francis Crick and James Watson. Ever since I was a PhD student at the University of Cambridge in the late 1980s, I've been fascinated by the way their discovery changed our understanding of life. Deep inside the chemical structure of DNA and its information-bearing properties during the 1950s, biologists realized that living organisms are very similar to high-tech devices and rely on digital information. That information is stored as a four-letter chemical code, embedded in the coiled shape of the double DNA helix. Given the importance of information to living things, it is now clear that many distinct information revolutions have occurred in the history of life, not revolutions of human discovery or invention, but revolutions involving the dramatic increase of information found in the living world itself. Scientists now know that building an organism requires information, and building new forms of life from simpler earlier forms requires a huge amount of new information. In 2009, she wrote a book called Signature in the Cell, in which she explained the first information-rich revolution in the history of life, the ones that occurred with the first life on Earth. She described how molecular biological discoveries during the 1950s and 1960s proved that DNA contained digital information, carried by the four chemical units known as nucleotide bases, that function as letters in written language or as symbols in computer code. The pattern of information found in living cells – that specific information, in which the sequence of letters affects the function of the sequence as a whole – has produced an intractable dilemma, as undirected physical or chemical processes do not show the ability to produce specific information emanating from purely physical or chemical ancestors. That is why theories of chemical evolution have failed to solve the dilemma of the origin of life, a claim that few evolutionary theorists dispute today. In my book, Sign in the Cell, I not only mentioned the well-known crisis in the studies of the origin of life, but I also made the argument in favor of intelligent design theory. Although we do not know a physical cause that generates a functional digital code of abstract physical and chemical materials, we do know that, based on our repeated and systematic experience, there is a single pattern that has a proven force in the production of this pattern of information, namely intelligence or mind. For this reason, the discovery of digital information in one of the simplest living cells refers to the previous act of an intelligent designer who first created this life. My book proved controversial, but in an unexpected way: Although I clearly stated that I was writing about the emergence of early life, and about the theories of chemical evolution that you are trying to explain from simple elementary chemicals, many critics responded to it as if I had written on a different subject altogether. Only a few have tried to refute my book’s real thesis that intelligent design provides the best explanation for the emergence of the information necessary to produce early life, except that the majority have criticized the book, as if it had offered a critique of the standard neo-Darwinian theories of biological evolution, which attempt to explain the emergence of new forms of life from simpler living forms that preceded them. So, to refute my claims that there are no chemical evolutionary processes that have been shown to explain the initial emergence of information in DNA, or RNA, that is necessary to produce life from simpler pre-existing chemicals, many critics have cited existing processes in existing organisms, especially natural selection, that work on random mutations in pre-existing segments of DNA. These critics have cited undirected processes that work on pre-existing information-rich DNA molecules to refute an argument that undirected physical processes failed to produce the information in DNA for the first time. For example, the prominent evolutionary biologist Francisco Ayala has attempted to refute my book by saying that the evidence from human DNA and lower primates proves that the genomes of these organisms emerged as a result of an undirected, non-intelligent design process. Although my book does not address human evolution or attempt to explain the origin of the human genome, the process to which Ayala alluded clearly presupposes the existence of some information-rich lower genomes. Other discussions of the book have cited the mammalian immune system as an example of the ability of natural selection and mutations to generate new biological information. Although the mammalian immune system is only capable of doing these wonders because the mammals that are actually hosting it are alive, yet the mammalian immune system relies on a preprogrammed form in detail in terms of the adaptive capacity rich in genetic information, which emerged long after the first life was created. I find all this somewhat surreal, as if I am wandering through a missing chapter in Kafka’s novel. The book (Signature in the Cell) did not criticize the theory of biological evolution, nor did it question the ability of mutation and selection to add new information to already existing information-rich DNA. For those unaware of the particular problems faced by scientists trying to explain the origin of life, it may not be clear that natural selection does not help explain the emergence of early life, because if natural selection and mutations are ultimately able to produce new information in living organisms, why not in the pre-life environment? But the distinction between biological and prebiotic context is crucial to my argument, as natural selection assumes the existence of reproductive organisms, yet the self-replication of all surviving cells depends on proteins and nucleic acids – DNA and RNA – that are rich in information, and the emergence of these information-rich molecules is exactly what the origin researcher needs to explain. This is why Theodosius Dobzhansky, one of the founders of modern-day Darwinian syntactic theory, says fluently: “Prebiotic natural selection is a contradictory term,” or, as the molecular biologist and researcher on the origin of life, Nobel laureate Christian de Dov, explains. Duve) argues that prebiotic natural selection theories fail because they "need information, which means that they presuppose the existence of what they have to explain in the first place."[6] It seems insufficient to invoke a process that begins to work (only) after life has existed, or as soon as biological information has appeared, to explain the origin of life or the origin of the information necessary to produce it. However, I have long been aware of the strong reasons to question the ability of mutations and selection to add sufficient new information of the right kind to explain major evolutionary innovations, which is why I found it really tedious to admit, even if out of debate, the truth of something I think is wrong. Repeated discouragement from critics continued to its extremes, although I did not write books, or make arguments, in response to critics' criticism of my book (signing in the cell), but I decided to write a book. Of course, it may seem that the safest course of action is not to correct any mistake. Many evolutionary biologists today are averse to the inability of all theories of chemical evolution to adequately explain the origin of life, or the basic origin of the information necessary to produce life. Despite the widespread influence of textbooks, popular media, and spokespersons of the scientific establishment in communicating the contrary idea, the doctrine of the modern Darwinian theory of biological evolution has reached an impasse and is quite dangerous, as is the dilemma facing the theory of chemical evolution. Flags prominent today in multiple disciplines – cell biology, synthetic biology, molecular biology, paleontology, and even evolutionary biology – criticize the main tenets of the latest version of Darwinian theory, which we find in the authoritative and peer-reviewed jurisdictional literature. Since 1980, Harvard paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould has stated that modern Darwinism is "dead and dead, though it remains a textbook tradition." A constant stream of articles and specialist books casts new doubts about the creative power of the two mechanisms (mutation) and (election).8 These doubts are so well established that the leading evolutionary theorists now have to be reassured from time to time by the popularity of the theory. The main problem facing modern Darwinists, as in the theory of chemical evolution, is that of the emergence of new biological information, and although modern Darwinists often neglect the problem of the origin of life as an isolated anomaly, the pioneers of theorists also acknowledge the failure of modern Darwinism to explain the emergence of innovative species and systems, without which natural selection and genetics can do little. At the same time, traditional examples of natural selection prowess and random mutations do not include the creation of innovative genetic information. Many biological texts tell us about the famous birds of the Galapagos Islands, whose beaks have varied in shape and length over time. These texts also mention how moth groups in Britain turned darker, and then returned to a lighter color in response to varying levels of industrial pollution. Such scenes are presented as crucial evidence of the power of evolution, but the fact that they rely on the self-definition of the word evolution, as this term has multiple meanings, and few biological school references distinguish them, as evolution can refer to anything from periodic surface change within the boundaries of the pre-existing genetic basin, to the creation of structures and genetic information entirely innovative as a result of natural selection working on random mutations. A large number of prominent biologists in recent specialist papers explain that micro-evolutionary changes cannot be generalized to explain large-scale macro-evolutionary innovations. For the most part, microevolutionary changes, such as variation in shape or color, use existing or expressed genetic information, while macroevolutionary changes necessary to assemble new organs or complete physical blueprints require the creation of entirely new information. An increasing number of evolutionary biologists also note that natural selection explains "only the survival of the most adaptive, and not the emergence of the most adaptive."[12] Specialized publications in biology abound with the names of world-class biologists[13] who routinely express skepticism about aspects of modern Darwinian theory, especially its central tenet, which is the purported creative ability of natural selection. And mutations. However, common defenses of the theory persist, and a growing scientific opinion critical of the theory's position is rarely, if ever, acknowledged. In this way, there is little significant discrepancy between the theory's common perception and its true position in peer-reviewed peer-reviewed scientific publications. Today, modern Darwinism seems to enjoy universal acclaim among bloggers, science journalists, bio-curriculum writers, and some of science’s best-known spokesmen as a unifying grand theory of all biology. University and high school curricula present evolutionary doctrine without justification, and do not acknowledge the existence of significant scientific criticism. At the same time, official scientific organizations such as the National Academy of Sciences, the American Association for the Advancement of Sciences, and the National Association of Biology Teachers periodically look to the public to say that the contemporary version of the theory Darwinism enjoys unprecedented support among qualified scientists, and biological evidence overwhelmingly supports the theory. For example, in 2006, the AAAS stated that "there is no significant debate within the scientific community about the validity of the theory of evolution."[14] The media echoed these statements, and the New York Times science columnist Cornelia Dean asserted in 2007 that “There is no scientific challenge to the theory of evolution as an explanation for the complexity and biodiversity of the Earth.” I realized with bitterness the extent of the discrepancy between the alleged mass status of the theory and its real status that is mentioned in the modern specialized journals, while I was preparing to testify before the Texas State Board of Education in 2009. The Board was at that time considering adopting a conditional paragraph in its educational scientific standards that encourages teachers to inform students of the strength and weakness of scientific theories, this paragraph became a political crisis after several groups asserted that the existence of the (strength and weakness of education) are the keywords of the evangelical moralists demanding to remove the theory of evolution. In a statement to The Dallas Morning News. At the same time, I was preparing a package of a hundred peer-reviewed scientific articles, in which biologists review the serious problems in theory, which I later presented to the faculty during my testimony. So I knew conclusively that Dr. Scott was skewing the scientific community’s opinion on the theory in the relevant scientific publications, and I also knew why she was trying to prevent students from hearing something about the serious problems in evolutionary theory, which may have killed Darwin’s own mind. This book documents Darwin’s greatest suspicion, what happened to him, and experiences an important event in a crucial period of geological history in which vast numbers of animal forms suddenly appeared, with no evolutionary ancestors preserved in the fossil record; a mysterious event that is often referred to as the “Cambrian Explosion.” As Darwin himself acknowledged in his book The Origin of Species, Darwin viewed this event as a disturbing anomaly that he hoped future fossil discoveries would destroy him once and for all. The first part (The Lost Fossil Mystery) describes the problem that first generated Darwin's suspicions, the lost ancestors of Cambrian animals in the former Precambrian fossil record, and then recounts the ongoing and unsuccessful attempts by biologists and fossilists to solve this mystery. The second part, How to Build an Animal, explains why the dilemma of the Cambrian explosion is becoming more acute with the discovery of the importance of information to living systems. Biologists now know that the Cambrian explosion is not only an explosion of new animal forms and structures, but also an information explosion, which was in fact one of the largest information revolutions in the history of life. The third part (What's after Darwin?) evaluates newer evolutionary theories, to see if any of them explain the origin of shapes and information more efficiently than modern Darwinian theory does, and the third part presents and evaluates intelligent design theory as a possible solution to the Cambrian dilemma. The concluding chapter discusses the effects of design debate in biology on larger philosophical questions, which bring life to the meaning of human existence. As the title of the book indicates, I will explain how an isolated anomaly, acknowledged by Darwin as transient, crystallizes into a fundamental problem of all evolutionary biology: the problem of the emergence of biological forms and information. To know where that problem comes from, and why evolutionary biology is in crisis, we need to start from scratch, with Darwin’s own skepticism, with the fossil evidence that gave birth to that skepticism, and with the vociferous debate between two of the most famous naturalists of the Victorian era: the famous Harvard paleontologist Louis Agassiz and Charles Darwin himself. (1) Quastler, The Emergence of Biological Organization, 16. 2 For justice, I must mention that few of my critics really tried to refute my actual theses on the genesis of life, and I and my colleagues have mentioned these critics in several articles compiled into a book: David Klinghoffer, ed. "Signature of Controversy", Discovery Institute Press, 2010. * The book was translated at the Brahin Center later in 2018 under the title (Signature Debate in the Cell). (3) Francisco Ayala, "On Reading the Cell’s Signature," Biologos.org, January 7, 2010, http://biologos.org/blog/on-reading-the-cells-signature. (4) Venema, "Seeking a Signature," 278. (5) Dobzhansky, "Discussion of G. Schramm’s Paper," 310. (6) De Duve, Blueprint for a Cell, 187. (7) Gould, "Is a New and General Theory of Evolution Emerging?" 120. 8 For example, see books such as: Kauffman, The Origins of Order; Goodwin, How the Leopard Changed Its Spots; Eldredge, Reinventing Darwin; Raff, The Shape of Life; Müller and Newman, On the Origin of Organismal Form; Valentine, On the Origin of Phyla; Arthur, The Origin of Animal Body Plans; and Shapiro, Evolution. That's just the tip of the iceberg. (9) Fotoyama asserts: "There is certainly no disagreement among biologists about the fact that evolution has occurred ... But the theory that explains how it has occurred is another matter altogether, and it is the subject of heated debate" (Evolution as Fact and Theory, 8). Of course, the recognition that natural selection is unable to explain the appearance of design is tantamount to admitting that it has failed to perform the claimed task as an alternative to the designer. (10) Scott Gilbert, Stuart Newman, and Graham Budd, as quoted in Whitfield, "Biological Theory"; Mazur, The Altenberg 16. (11) Kauffman Kauffman, 361; Raff, The Shape of Life; Miklos, "Emergence of Organizational Complexities During Metazoan Evolution". (12) Gilbert et al., "Resynthesizing Evolutionary and Developmental Biology." (13) Webster, How the Leopard Changed Its Spots, 33; Webster and Goodwin, Form and Transformation, x; Gunter Theissen, "The Proper Place of Hopeful Monsters in Evolutionary Biology," 351; Marc Kirschner and John Gerhart, The Plausibility of Life, 13; Schwartz, Sudden Origins, 3, 299–300; Erwin, "Macroevolution Is More Than Repeated Rounds of Microevolution";Davidson, "Evolutionary Bioscience as Regulatory Systems Biology," 35; Koonin, "The Origin at150," 473–75; Conway Morris, "Walcott, the Burgess Shale, and Rumours of a Post-Darwinian World," R928-R930; Carroll, "Towards a New Evolutionary Synthesis," 27; Wagner, "What Is the Promise of Developmental Evolution?"; Wagner and Stadler, "Quasi-independence, Homology andthe Unity of Type"; Becker and Lönnig, "Transposons: Eukaryotic," 529–39; Lönnig and Saedler, "Chromosomal Rearrangements and Transposable Elements," 402; Muller and Newman, "Origination of Organismal Form," 7; Kauffman, At Home in the Universe, 8; Valentine and Erwin, "Interpreting Great Developmental Experiments," 96; Sermonti, Why Is a Fly Not a Horse?; Lynch, The Origins of Genome Architecture, 369; Shapiro, Evolution, 89, 128. David J. Depew and Bruce H. Weber,writing in the journal Biological Theory, are even more frank, "Darwinism in its current scientific incarnation has pretty much reached the end of its rope" (89–102). (14) "Statement on Teaching Evolution by the Board of Directors of the American Association for the Advancement of Science," St.Louis, Missouri, February 16, 2006; (accessed October 26, 2012)". (15) Dean, "Scientists Feel Miscast in Film on Life’s Origin". (16) Eugenie Scott, quoted in Stutz, "State Board of Education Debates Evolution Curriculum"; alsorequoted in Stoddard, "Evolution Gets Added Boost in Texas Schools". - Dr. Steven Meyer. — Source: Brahin Center website - Published on 2016-01-23 (archived at the Internet Archive) https://braheen.com/publications/intros/شك-داروين-النشوء-المفاجئ-لحياة-الكائنات-وحجة-التصميم-الذكي-مقدمة-المؤلف