The Evolution of Serendipity


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A key question for evolution has always been: How does biological variation arise? Darwin’s theory of evolution explained that natural selection killed off the less-fit variations, but how did the variation arise in the first place? In the nineteenth century the mechanisms of biological variation were not well understood and it was possible to imagine a sort of simple, perturbing force at work which gradually altered designs. This model did not match up very well with what Gregor Mendel was discovering about change in pea plants. About the same time that Darwin was working on revisions to his book Mendel was uncovering the fundamental laws of genetics. But Mendelian genetics would call for discrete jumps in biological variation rather than gradual modifications. It would take much work but about half a century later Mendel’s findings were integrated with Darwin’s theory of evolution. This neo-Darwinism was thought to be a great advance. Was not the poorly understood source of biological variation now revealed and reconciled with Darwin’s theory? But the neo-Darwinists had turned a blind eye to the elephant that was now in the room: Evolution now required a complex Mendelian machine to generate the needed biological variation.

This problem with neo-Darwinism is very simple. In order for evolution to continue, evolution first had to create the complex Mendelian variation machine. In other words, evolution creates the mechanism that evolution requires to work. It was an absurd level of serendipity that no one cared to notice.

Since the formulation of neo-Darwinism this problem of serendipity has only become worse. For the genes, alleles and various machinery required by Mendelian genetics were only the beginning. Indeed, it became increasingly understood that Mendel provided only a portion of the needed biological change.

Today evolutionists call upon a dizzying array of phenomenally complex mechanisms to produce jumps in biological change in an attempt to explain evolution. Horizontal gene transfer, cell fusions, directed mutations, domain shuffling and cis-acting regulatory changes are but a few of the new breed of mechanisms called upon to generate evolution’s new designs. Evolution created genes that can be transfered, mechanisms that do the transferring, cells that can be fused, DNA that can be mutated, processes to direct the mutations, domains that can be shuffled, regulatory schemes that can bring about changes, and so forth. As one evolutionist concluded, “hereditary variation arises from the non-random action of built-in biochemical systems that mobilize DNA and carry out natural genetic engineering.”

Natural genetic engineering? This is neo-Darwinism on steroids and its astronomical level of serendipity is absurd. Do evolutionists seriously think people will believe it is an undeniable truth that evolution created the phenomenally complex process of evolution, which then enabled evolution to occur?

How about an undeniable tale?

The evolutionist’s failure to reckon with their own credulity is astonishing. They contrive a truly silly idea while proclaiming it to be a fact we must accept. I would be the first to proclaim evolution as true if the evidence was there. But the evolutionists have not only failed to deliver—they have made themselves appear foolish.

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