Evidence for Supernatural Origin of ...
Retorts to Evolutionists' Objections and Criticisms
The following list of creation representations and claims (total of fifteen) are in the words of Rennie, and do not necessarily reflect legitimate creation claims or represent all creationists' positions.
14. Researchers have identified primitive eyes and light-sensing organs throughout the animal kingdom and have even tracked the evolutionary history of eyes through comparative genetics. Rennie’s answer to: Living things have fantastically intricate features--at the anatomical, cellular and molecular levels--that could not function if they were any less complex or sophisticated. The only prudent conclusion is that they are the products of intelligent design, not evolution.
Rennie responds by saying that Darwin gave an answer to William Pauley’s eye by design argument. But having an answer does not mean a solution has been found to explain the difficulty of irreducible complexity in design.
Design arguments are valid, and even Darwin admitted: “If it could be demonstrated that any complex organ existed, which could not possibly have been formed by numerous, successive, slight modifications, my theory would absolutely breakdown." Charles Darwin, ‘The Origin of Species’.
Regarding eye complexity and design implications, Levi-Setti writes: “… this optical doublet is a device so typically associated with human invention that its discovery in trilobites comes as something of a shock. The realization that trilobites developed and used such devices half a billion years ago makes the shock even greater. And a final discovery—that the refracting interface between the two lens elements in a trilobite’s eye was designed in accordance with optical constructions worked out by Descartes and Huygens in the mid-seventeenth century—borders on sheer science fiction…. The design of the trilobite’s eye lens could well qualify for a patent disclosure (Levi-Setti, Riccardo (1993), Trilobites (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, pp. 57, 58).
R.L. Gregory writes that evolution fails to explain eye design and favors creation saying, "The Trilobites that appeared in the Cambrian period all of a sudden have an extremely complex eye structure. Consisting of millions of honeycomb shaped tiny particles and a double lens system, this eye ‘has an optimal design which would require a well trained and imaginative optical engineer to develop today’ in the words of David Raup, a professor of geology. This eye emerged 530 million years ago in a perfect state. No doubt, the sudden appearance of such a wondrous design cannot be explained by evolution and it proves the actuality of creation. Moreover, the honeycomb eye structure of the trilobite has survived to our own day without a single change. Some insects such as bees and dragon flies have the same eye structure as the trilobite" (R .L. Gregory, 1995, Eye and Brain: The Physiology of seeing).
Amazingly, evolutionists propose that the unlikely event of eye formation has occurred not only once but several times. Salisbury writes, “Even something as complex as the eye has appeared several times; for example, in the squid, the vertebrates, and the arthropods. It’s bad enough accounting for the origin of such things once, but the thought of producing them several times according to the modern synthetic theory makes my head swim” Frank Salisbury, "Doubts About the Modern Synthetic Theory of Evolution," American Biology Teacher, September 1971, p. 338.
Molecular biologist and medical doctor Michael Denton describes cellular complexity saying, "To grasp the reality of life as it has been revealed by molecular biology, we must magnify a cell a thousand million times until it is the twenty kilometers in diameter and resembles a giant airship large enough to cover a great city like London or New York. What we would then see would be an object of unparalled complexity and adaptive design. On the surface of the cell we would see millions of openings, like portholes of a vast space ship, opening and closing to allow a continual stream of materials to flow in and out. If we were to enter one of these openings we would find ourselves in a world of supreme technology and bewildering complexity...beyond our own creative capacities, a reality which is the very antithesis of chance, which excels in every sense anything produced by the intelligence of man..." (Michael Denton, 1986. 'Evolution: A Theory in Crisis', Adler & Adler, pp. 328-329).
15. Evolutionary biologists have answers to these objections. Rennie’s answer to: Recent discoveries prove that even at the microscopic level, life has a quality of complexity that could not have come about through evolution.
Rennie’s point here is a repeat of the previous question and so is the answer. Having an answer does not mean a solution to the problem has been offered. In this case, Rennie fails to make his case against irreducible complexity.
For flagella and blood clotting, Rennie offers speculation as to how these phenomena may have been the product of modified functions of previous phenomena. Speculation is an answer but not a solution.
Though Rennie has difficulty with the conclusion of complex design, complexity in organization and function is recognize by many as an argument for design.
Katz writes: "In the natural world, there are many pattern-assembly systems for which there is no simple explanation. There are useful scientific explanations for these complex systems, but the final patterns that they produce are so heterogeneous that they cannot effectively be reduced to smaller or less intricate predecessor components. As I will argue ... these patterns are, in a fundamental sense, irreducibly complex..." (1986, Michael J. Katz, in his Templets and the explanation of complex patterns (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986).
Reference
John Rennie, July 2002, "15 answers to Creationist nonsense", Scientific American.
Evidence for Supernatural Origin of ...