If evolution is true, then disorder is the only kind of order possible in nature.
If you do an online search for the definition of “evolution” or “natural selection” you will be confused. This confusion arises because the definition of both terms has evolved over time to better fit the observed data, which is to say that the definitions you will find are hardly enlightening or controversial.
Modern definitions, in addition to being confusing, tend to simply describe the supposed results of evolution or natural selection. These definitions relate to population genetics, selection pressure, genetic drift, differential survival, and reproductive success, all of which account for relatively minor and unremarkable changes within an existing family of plants or animals.
In fact, textbook definitions of evolution have evolved—devolved?—into nothing more than a description of how one kind of a finch might turn into another type of a finch. In this sense the definitions of evolution are no longer explanatory with respect to how finches–or human beings–came into being in the first place.
It is not just us who recognize this fact of the current state of evolution. Take the views of the pro-evolution organization National Center for Science Education (NCSE). The NCSE has surveyed various ways evolution is defined and how those definitions have changed throughout history. In a section of their website entitled “Defining Evolution,” the NCSE recognizes that:
[s]ome of the definitions found in the scientific literature, including textbooks and popularizations of evolutionary theory, use technical terms that do not seem to convey to the public that evolution explains the diversity of living forms. https://ncse.ngo/defining-evolution-0
To illustrate, the NCSE offers several definitions including one that, according to the NCSE, has become the standard definition in textbooks:
[E]volution can be precisely defined as any change in the frequency of alleles within a gene pool from one generation to the next. Ibid.
The NCSE goes on to point out that many leading evolutionists—including Ernst Mayr, the “Darwin of the 20th century”—reject this definition as “not explanatory” and even “misleading.” (Ibid.)
We agree; if this is the definition of evolution, then evolution is neither surprising nor controversial and it indeed explains nothing. Note, for example, that this is not even a definition; it is merely an observation. Evolution is a process, and any definition should be that of a process. Consider if the process of photosynthesis was “defined” the same way: “Photosynthesis can be precisely defined as any change in the color green within a leaf pool from one season to the next.”
Textbook definitions of “natural selection” fare no better. Leading evolutionary textbooks also define natural selection by describing the results achieved, rather than explaining how natural selection achieves the results. Consider, for example, these two representative definitions of natural selection from Biomedical Central:
The differential survival and/or reproduction of classes of entities that differ in one or more characteristics. https://evolution-outreach.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1007/s12052-009-0128-1/tables/1, citing Futuyma (2005)
Or,
The correlation of a trait with variation in reproductive success. Ibid., citing Stearns and Hoekstra (2005).
Neither of these definitions go beyond merely a fancy description of nature’s food chain, and both fail to describe any process that explains how differential survival or how reproductive success of the survivors is achieved. Again, such definitions are akin to defining photosynthesis as “the correlation of the color green with variation in CO2 assimilation success.” Observation of a result absent a mechanism for achieving the result is not a useful definition.
The NCSE notes that such definitions,
. . . illustrate that there is a wide range of approaches to defining evolution and that ‘experts’ disagree over what to emphasize in their definitions. https://ncse.ngo/defining-evolution-0
The “wide range of approaches” is indicative of an important weakness in evolutionary theory: The theory, when explained in its simple essence, cannot work.
What is the simple essence of Darwin’s theory that remains the unchanged foundation for all explanatory current definitions of evolution?
Darwin’s theory, and every definition of the process of evolution that is explanatory for new features, new morphology, new organs, and the development of every current life form from a first primitive life form, is very simple. It is, in fact, a process with only two steps:
First, in a replicating organism there is descent with modification.
Descent with modification is Darwin’s term for the observed reality on earth that when organisms reproduce, the child organism often exhibits modifications due to inherited traits.
Darwin referred to such modifications as “favourable variations” or “injurious variations.”
Today we know that these “heritable traits” arrive on earth in the child organism via genetic variation, usually genetic mutations.
Second, there is natural selection.
According to Darwin, and modern biology, natural selection “preserves” the favorable variations and “rejects” the injurious variations.
Natural selection creates nothing new, modifies nothing old, and explains nothing with respect to the arrival of the fittest on earth.
That’s it.
Evolution as an explanation for your eyes, for example, involves only those two steps. In the distant past something without eyes descended with modifications (genetic variations) over many generations. In each generation natural selection did something with those modifications and now here you are with eyes.
And birds have wings, fish have gills, mammals have lungs, insects have six legs, fruit has seeds, flowers have petals, and on and on. Everything that is part of every living thing came from a first living thing that had none of them. And every innovation in biology came from those two simple steps of evolution introduced by Darwin.
Oh! And human beings have brains.
Human beings have more than just brains. Human beings have the capacity to reason, exercise discernment, and notice when an emperor has no clothes.
If you use your brain and your ability to reason, you should be able to see the nakedness of the evolutionary two-step process.
Consider: Natural selection can only act, if at all, on already created things. That is, natural selection, whatever it does, plays no role in the creation of all the eyes, wings, gills, lungs, legs, seeds, and petals, that were created from that first primitive life form.
So what can account for the creation of eyes, wings, gills, lungs, legs, seeds, and petals from a first life form that had none of those?
(Oh, and don’t forget brains.)
That’s right! The only part of the evolutionary process that can create eyes, wings, gills, lungs, legs, seeds, and petals, whether little by little or all at once, is the first step of the process, genetic variation.
And do you know how genetic variation arises?
Yes, that’s right: randomly without purpose or plan in a disordering of a previously more ordered genetic code. We call this disordering “genetic variation” and it occurs primarily through genetic mutations as Darwin’s “descent with modification.”
Make no mistake: Step one of the evolutionary process is a step of disordering. Imagine a small rock wall subjected to generations of small earthquakes eventually producing among the vast rubble of fallen rocks an ordered rock fortress of massive towers, expansive rooms, impressive spires, and dark dungeons. This is exactly analogous to the scenario we are to believe actually happened: Evolution holds that the constant disordering of a presumed, relatively small, first replicating genome eventually “fell up” and organized to be the relatively vast, highly ordered, human genome today.
Evolutionists, of course, believe that natural selection brings order to the disorder of genetic mutations. But this is a myth. We have exposed the myth clearly in The Natural Selection Paradox.
But for now exercise your own discernment: Even giving natural selection magical capability, the raw material upon which it acts is produced by disorder. And natural selection cannot change the raw material, it can only (supposedly) “preserve” some of it or “reject” some of it.
Thus, even if imagined with supernatural power, natural selection at its best can only sort among disorder. One kind of disorder gets rejected and one kind of disorder gets preserved. But either way, with evolution it’s disorder all the way down.
Evolutionists must glory in disorder. Disorder is the only order available to the second process step of natural selection. And natural selection cannot change the disorder into order, it can only “preserve” some disorder and “reject” other disorder. Again, for evolution, it’s disorder all the way down (or up).
If evolution is true, then the process is truly magical because it resembles nothing that human beings otherwise experience in life. Evolutionists can glory in their mythological evolutionary machine churning out disorder upon disorder in the human genome with each generation slowly creating a new, better equiped, Homo sapiens.
Maybe, on paper in the theoretical back rooms of evolutionary biologists.
But do you know who uses the term “disorder” in the context of genetics in real life?
Doctors. Parents. Children. Basically everyone ever affected by . . . wait for it . . . a genetic disorder.
And the word “glory” does not attach to the disorder caused by random genetic variation in the cancer patients and the children with birth defects in real world. A genetic disorder is a health problem caused by one or more abnormalities in the genome. It can be caused by a mutation in a single gene (monogenic) or multiple genes (polygenic) or by a chromosomal abnormality.
Health problems. Abnormalities. Mutations. Chromosomal abnormality. These are the real-world, empiracally observed, fact-based results of “descent with modification” due to random genetic mutations during replication.
The very engine supposedly driving the biological order-producing evolutionary machine is recognized in real life for what it really does. It produces exactly what you would expect from random copying errors: genetic disorders.
Think about it.
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