Could There be Design in Evolution

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so why do you exist have you ever asked

yourself that or better yet why do you

exist right now well there are a number

of ways you could answer that

philosophically scientifically

historically biologically speaking the

reason you exist now is because your

parents got together and had offspring

who were the offspring of their parents

who are the offspring of their parents

and so on and so and this goes back

millions of years and we call this the

theory of evolution but despite this

theory giving us a wealth of information

in terms of the biological diversity we

see culturally speaking it is quite

divisive many people reject this theory

for the consequences they think it

creates for why we exist instead of

being placed on this earth by a creator

and a doubt with purpose and a plan for

our lives they think evolution teaches

we are here by chance and we evolved

through a blind process without purpose

and meaning and it’s not like many

experts have said otherwise

for example Richard Dawkins has said

evolution has no long-term goal there is

no long distance target no final

perfection to serve as a criterion for

selection although human vanity

cherishes the absurd notion that our

species is the final goal of evolution

paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould once

said we are here because one our group

of fishes had a peculiar fit anatomy

that could transform into legs for

terrestrial creatures because the earth

never frozen tirely during an Ice Age

because the small instead tenuous

species arising in Africa a quarter of a

million years ago has managed so far to

survive by hook and by crook we may

yearn for higher answers but none exists

we’ll come back to Gould later on so if

you go into a church or a mosque and you

ask them why they reject the theory of

evolution you might get an answer that

believing in evolution means we have no

purpose it means we have no value no

moral worth we are just a biological

accident and because of this a cultural

war is kind of broken out with the

narrative being you either accept

science in the philosophical worldview

that we have no purpose and no meaning

or you have to reject evolution and hold

to some intelligent design theory that

life was supernaturally created and then

you can save your innate beliefs that we

have purpose meaning and value but are

we really stuck with just these two

options I would argue no and that

there’s a third option yes life is the

product of natural processes we evolved

from a common ancestor but evolution

doesn’t necessarily mean we’re the

result of a blind process that there’s

no final goal

no teleology no overall guiding process

so think of the periodic table of

elements after the Big Bang all that

existed was hydrogen then over a long

period of time the universe brought

about a plethora of elements but this

was not random Locker just a dumb chance

certain physical laws constrain

molecules to bring about the elements we

have now in other words if you

understood how the laws of nature worked

moments after the Big Bang you could

predict the elements on the periodic

table that came about naturally

likewise when it comes to life within

the past few decades we are finding more

and more evidence the process of

evolution in abiogenesis

are very constrained processes and life

may not be a happy accident but an

inevitable result of the universe itself

so if you order a wine the type of life

start over billions of years ago on the

view that evolution was an unguided

blind process you wouldn’t get life as

we know it again you probably get

something very different on the view I’m

proposing if you were wound the type of

life and started over you would get

humans again or at least something very

similar if you did it again the same

result would happen again and again so

let’s begin by going back before

evolution back to the origin of life in

this

is called abiogenesis okay was this

purely a random accident did everything

that life needs to begin to exist just

fall into the right place at the right

time well we’re not really sure entirely

how life began but what we’re finding

out is suggesting it was highly

constrained by natural law for example

Jeremy England his Co researchers have

theorized life may be an inevitable

result of the laws of thermodynamics

according to England and his Co

researchers after running several

computer simulations they found

molecules in rare cases will naturally

structure and self organize in order to

deal with rare pockets of energy in

other words different chemicals organize

and react with one another in order to

better absorb incoming energy like from

the Sun and then dissipated as heat so

the very laws of physics the telus atoms

will build structures in order to better

process energy but such systems do

resemble life as we are consuming

creatures that take in and burn off

energy and these could be the first

clues to how the first molecules began

to build towards the first single celled

organism but this was not a fluke of

nature it was inevitable in certain

conditions as England told quanta in

2014 life should be as unsurprising as

rocks rolling downhill but even before

England we’ve known other constraints in

nature they would find - in the process

of evolution in abiogenesis

as far back as the 1980s scientists were

aware of self-assembly processes that

brought about the existence of proto

cells and this is a very important step

towards the origin of life but once

again such structures were the result of

self-assembly processes in nature not

chemical accidents another study ran

successful computer simulations of Kemet

chemical interactions would have been

like in a prebiotic world complex

behavior resulted without the existence

of genes and the researchers observe

highly constrained monomer weapon

repertoires an intricate polymer

chemistry as seen in living cells

then in 2013 another exciting discovery

found that RNA like molecules can

spontaneously assemble into gene like

chains and this could have been a

primitive form of genetic information

they could have eventually evolved into

RNA and then DNA now the whole origin of

life question has not been fully solved

don’t get me wrong but there are a lot

of signposts pushing us in the direction

that life wasn’t necessarily a fluke or

a pure accident or that it was too

complex to naturally come about and we

need supernatural creation instead we’re

seeing this idea that the first single

celled organisms to emerge may have been

inevitable just from the laws of nature

now once we get life we see more

evidence that evolution from there on

out was constrained let’s compile all

this data with the work of two chemists

who wrote a paper perfectly titled

evolution was chemically constrained

they have argued thermodynamics and the

rules of chemistry constrain and bring

about an inevitable progression in the

direction of evolution there are

principles of constraint in the nature

of intracellular reductive chemistry the

challenge of oxygen and the cooperative

interactions within ecosystems they

conclude their paper by saying that life

was in a physical tunnel and there was

only one way to go there’s a lot of

evidence of nature of protein folds or a

natural product of amino acid assembly

and constrained by a law like behavior

to form into specific biological

structures necessary for life so in

other words the rise of the various

protein folds necessary for life to

exist seemed to be a result of natural

laws let me just quote two researchers

on this all those sequences and

functionalities of proteins evolved the

folds they adopt which in turn

determined function seem to be

determined by physical law and are not

subject to Darwinian evolution in that

regard these folds may be thought of as

immutable or platonic protein folds do

not evolve rather than many of possible

folds

determined by physical law so what we

see is an essential building block for

life was already written into the fabric

of the universe and I want to remind you

all there are dozens of additional

examples I could go over the more we

research the origin of life in evolution

the more likely it is that life was

written into the laws of nature in other

words just like you could predict the

periodic table if you understood all of

the laws of physics entirely in theory

you should also be ever able to predict

that life will come about and that

nature would direct it down a certain

path now if there are so many

constraints in evolution how does this

affect the life how does this affect

life as we see in the SAP thousands of

species today

well evolution mainly works through

divergence

this is when a population of species

split off and diverge that two different

paths but what we also see is hundreds

of cases of convergence this is where

similar function functions structures in

forms keep appearing in nature basically

if nature is fine-tuned to bring about

certain structures and biological

functions then we should expect to see

the same forms repeating and then we

have found dozens upon dozens of

examples of convergence this is again

this has been two organisms not closely

related of all the same traits

structures or features so it seems that

if an organism enters an environment

there are specific constraints that

determine how the organism will evolve

so let’s take a look at these two guys

okay both are sloths and yet they cannot

reproduce well why well one is a

three-toed sloth and the other is a two

toed sloth now you think just by looking

at them that they’re species are cousins

or that they’re closely related but in

fact they’re not they are actually

pretty distant but both evolved or

converged to arrive with the same

structure and form this is another

interesting example this was one of them

is a hummingbird and the other is an

insect known as a hawk moth but once

again they converged to the same form

because they both entered the same

ecological niche

now next up we have camera eyes which

evolved in vertebrates you I everyone

today has camera eyes this is a very

complex structure but camera eyes have

actually evolved multiple times along

different divergent lines here’s one my

favorite examples because I love cats

this is the African cheetah and you

might not be aware of it but thousands

of years ago there was an American

cheetah the two actually evolved

independently and yet are almost

identical

so Daniel Adams writes the points of

similarity are so extensive that such a

complex nature that a hypothesis

attributing their pricing to other than

common genetic descent would require

pushing the concept of parallel

evolution to an unprecedented extreme

here’s another fascinating chart with

examples of parallel evolution between

placental mammals and marsupials now as

you can see similar forms keep appearing

along completely different lines

paleontologist Simon Conway Morris has

basically published several books that

just lists the examples of convergence

we find in nature this one thick book

pictured here is a 450 page book of

hundreds of examples of convergence in

its astronomical the amount of

convergence we find but once again if

nature is fine-tuned to constrain life

and only go in certain directions this

is what we would expect and this is

merely a fraction of the evidence that I

could cover but if you really dive into

the data it truly becomes hard to deny

that in some sense the evolution of life

must have been heavily constrained and

directed remember at the beginning that

I quoted the paleontologist Stephen Jay

Gould on the implications of a purely

random unguided theory of evolution well

it’s not like gold ever became religious

or spiritual but in terms of how he

thought of evolution his views did

evolve just before he died he said this

I work piecemeal producing a set of

separate and continually accreting

revisionary items along each of the

branches of Darwinian central logic

until

I realized that a platonic something up

there in ideological space could

coordinate all these critiques and

fascinations into a revised general

theory with retained Darwinian base in

other words the process of evolution

could very easily be explained as a

guided process by natural law not

something that is purely blind or random

so when it comes to us as humans I think

it is incorrect to say that we are just

fortunate apes here by chance to quote

the physicists Freeman John Dyson the

more I examine the universe in the

details of its architecture the more

evidence I find that the universe in

some sense must have known we were

coming and I think if you study the

evidence of the fine-tuning in physics

is well above whatever as well as what

we went over today in terms of biology

and chemistry it is hard to deny that

the universe must have known we were

coming but also we could suggest the

universe was meant to shape us into what

we are now so where does this leave us

well going back to the cultural divide I

mentioned at the beginning I suggest a

way forward where we can have our cake

and eat it too it is scientifically true

to say that life evolved from a

single-celled organism millions of years

ago but it is false to claim that this

theory implies with a products of chance

or a blind process devoid of purpose and

meaning we can have a theory of

evolution that is consistent

incompatible with the belief that we are

here for a reason now not saying this

proves that this is the case it is

beyond the scope of science to say

either/or but if you believe there is

design in nature and if you believe

there was a reason for life this is

perfectly compatible with the theory of

evolution evolution could very well be

the method or design plan used to bring

us about and that we’re not just

products of chance or a blind process as

someone like Richard Dawkins will tell

you so going back to my original

question why are you here well it could

be because of a fluke or a blind process

but it could also be the

as you were meant to be and that belief

is perfectly compatible with the theory

of evolution thank you

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you

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