Could There be Design in Evolution
[Music]
[Applause]
[Music]
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
[Applause]
you
[Applause]