Genome complexity: challenges naturalism (Introduction)

by David Turell , Saturday, September 19, 2015, 21:21 (3353 days ago) @ David Turell

As I wrote in 1992 in my book (two years before my first book was published) the discoveries of increasingly complex mechanisms to create and sustain life would eventually bring an end to the acceptance of Darwin's theory of evolution. This article encapsulates my thinking perfectly:-http://www.evolutionnews.org/2015/07/evolutions_gran097591.html-Evolutionary biology was very much like other sciences up until the 1950s, when the information-bearing capabilities of DNA and RNA were discovered inside living cells.-These discoveries fundamentally changed biology. And as the information payload is increasingly unraveled, we're seeing ever more complex and interdependent assembly instructions, activation circuits, programming sequences, and message payloads. This information is decoded and operated on by molecular machines of similar complexity, and the whole (information + machines) is self-generating, self-sustaining, and self-replicating.-***-Aside from the obvious (and intriguing) challenge of understanding the enormous complexity of life's information payload, evolution purports to explain its origins.-The origin of life is perhaps the most obvious example of information's formidable hurdle to evolutionary explanations. First life requires all of the following:-•Sufficient complex programs and sequencing to support first life's complete lifecycle (i.e., the directions have to be complete and correct).
•Sufficient machinery to interpret the programs and to operate life (i.e., the directions must have proper effect).
•Sufficient programs and machinery to replicate both the programs and the machinery (i.e., the directions must be passed to the next generation).-And all this must be present at the same time, in the same place, in at least one instant in history, at which point the whole must somehow be animated to create life. And all this must occur, by definition, before an organism can reproduce. Without reproduction, there is no possibility to accumulate function, from simple to complex, as required by evolution. Hence, the programs must have contained all the complexity required for first life at inception.-***-So materialists face growing dissonance between their philosophical commitment and biology's complex programming. As the quality and quantity of the discovered interdependent programs and processing machinery increases, the plausibility of material causation gets weaker. So the materialist position is weak, and going in the wrong direction (from their perspective).-On the other hand, for anyone not fully committed to materialist philosophy the options are much more interesting. For those willing to consider the second class of causal force, things begin to fall into place and the dissonance dissipates.-For theists, the second class of causal force is not only acceptable, but expected. Further, theists are unsurprised to learn that the causal forces in class #1 are finely tuned to enable life, and they have no problem with the notion that random events are more likely to destroy information than create it (e.g., there are far more possible non-functioning programs than functioning programs).-Ongoing discoveries about the nature of the information at the core of life present a growing hurdle for the materialist worldview, but are increasingly friendly to any worldview that's open to a pre-biological intelligence with some means to assemble the programs and machinery minimally required for first life.-***
And this is evolution's grand challenge: The complex programs and amazing molecular machines at the heart of life simply cannot be explained by any current or proposed theory of evolution, nor by any other completely material cause. Apologists for materialism cannot hide this fact much longer. Neither the volume of their arguments nor any level of vitriol can change the fact that the data is skewing against them.-Rarely has any field of science had to deal with questions so difficult, or that cut so deeply into the worldviews, minds, and hearts, of thoughtful men and women.-Comment: Not by chance!!!