IRREDUCIBLE COMPLEXITY AND ONE OF THE INTRACTIBLE PROBLEMS OF EVOLUTION

Evolution and Darwin have offered “gradualism” to explain the development of new and beneficial structures, which improve a creature’s ability to survive and reproduce. Darwin theorized that each successive change (mutation, adaptation) had to produce a survival advantage in order for it to be “selected” (passed on) by evolution. But here’s the problem – a new and adaptive structure, like sonar, requires numerous and simultaneous changes before it can confer a survival advantage, and the evidence fails to provide any clear examples of this.

To use a very clear example of this problem – for a worm to become a butterfly, it has to build a cocoon around itself, totally deconstruct, and be transformed into an entirely different creature. For this to happen, thousands of pieces of genetic information have to simultaneously exist beforehand. Without all of this information, the worm will remain dead in its cocoon.

This problem is explained by the concept of “irreducible complexity (IC),” which observes that unless all of the materials and information are simultaneously present, no new functioning structure can naturalistically arise.

The mouse trap is often used to explain this problem. For a mousetrap to work, it cannot evolve gradually. All of the five parts must first be present and properly constructed or the trap will fail to catch a mouse. Nor can it be reduced to four parts to catch mice.

It is argued that every organ or structure is “irreducibly complex” and therefore defies evolutionary explanations. In Have You Considered: Evidence beyond a Reasonable Doubt, Bruce Malone provides several examples of (IC). Our blood must be able to clot, or any cut can cause us to bleed to death. However:

·       In order for blood to clot, there must be 12 specific individual chemicals reacting in a domino effect for a clot to form.

Malone adds that these chemicals must also be present in the right amounts lest no clot or too many clots result. How then could an animal survive unless this entire mechanism had been present! This reality defies any gradualistic Darwinian explanation.

Malone also offers the example of the carnivorous Venus flytrap. For it to survive on its exclusively insect diet, five complex systems have to be in place simultaneously.

1.    The insect has to be lured to Venus by a “sweet smelling aroma.”

2.    Venus has to “know the insect is there.”

3.    Venus has to “trap the insect.”

4.    Venus has to have the digestive apparatus to digest the insect.

5.    Finally, Venus has to eliminate the remains.

Lacking any one of these IC processes could mean starvation and death for Venus. Instead, each of these had to be present simultaneously.

We encounter this same problem within all species. Malone also cites the sea cucumber. It survives its predators by secreting its sticky organs which “can glue a predator’s throat shut.” Malone rhetorically asks:

·       How did the first sea cucumber survive the first time he spilled his guts? From the very beginning, he had to have the ability to vomit out his sticky organs and then have the ability to regrow them.

Without all of these complex abilities functioning simultaneously, the cucumber could not have survived.

Is there any evolutionary record of these adaptations (gradual changes found in the fossil record)? Not really! Malone offers the example of the monotremes, egg laying mammals. There are only two – the platypus and the echidria. Evolutionists believe that mammals had evolved from amphibians. However, the fossil record is silent about any such transition. Malone writes:

·       Did the platypus evolve? Fossil platypuses are essentially identical to modern platypuses; no transitional forms have been found.

I will offer once last example, among many, of IC. Malone offers the example of the poisonous snake. In order for this weapon to be functional, many systems have to be in place simultaneously:

1.    Venom

2.    Venom gland to store venom

3.    Canal to transfer venom to the fangs

4.    Hollow fangs…to inject the poison

5.    Muscles to contract the venom reservoir

6.    A nervous system to signal the muscles to contract

7.    Spring loaded fangs

8.    Instincts to know when and how to use all this against prey or predator

To illustrate the problem for Darwinian gradualism, all of these systems have to be present at the same time for the snake to deliver its lethal blow. If just one is lacking, the snake will not survive. Only the Design hypothesis is capable of accounting for the simultaneous appearance of all of the necessary systems.

As science continues to demonstrate the complexity, functionality, and profound elements of design, it becomes obvious that to deny design contradicts the many findings. It also suggests that the denial of an Intelligent Designer constitutes a rejection of the findings in favor of a blind faith that someday naturalistic explanations will counter-evidentially appear.