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The General Anti-Creationism FAQ
[3]Jim Meritt

_Topics: Chaos and Complexity_
* [4]Life is too complex to have happened by chance. 
* [5]Complexity from simplicity
* [6]Evolution violates the 2nd law of thermodynamics.
* [7]The creation of matter or energy is not now taking place
* [8]Various conceivable patterns fail to emerge
* [9]Half of the amino acids should be right-handed
* [10]Mathematical probability
* [11]Changes calling for numerous coordinated innovations
* [12]Chaos theory & biology
* [13]The fundamental principle of evolution contradictory to
established laws
* [14]We have never seen any natural processes which result in a
complexity increase.
* [15]The great complexity of nature shows it was designed.
* [16]There is no evidence of biological life anywhere else in the
universe
* [17]Odds too great
_________________________________________________________________

Life is too complex to have happened by chance. 

Another is the "randomness argument". What is "random", anyway? We are
never told. It says that self organization cannot occur because the
process is "blind" and "random" that is supposed to drive it. Never
mind that the system has a finite number of states it can occupy and
its history can constrain its future states. This borrows from the
thermodynamic argument the confusion over entropy and open system
states.

The theory of evolution doesn't say it did happen by chance. This
argument completely ignores natural selection. Please read:

Life in Darwin's Universe
G. Bylinsky, Omni Sept 79

The Evolution of Ecological Systems
May, Scientific American, Sept 1978

Chemical Evolution and the Origin of Life
Dickerson, Scientific American, Sept 1978

The Evolution of the Earliest Cells
Schopf, Scientific American, Sept 1978

The Evolution of Multicellular Plants and Animals
Valentine, Scientific American, Sept 1978
_________________________________________________________________

Complexity from simplicity 

``There was no primordial chaos before the big bang - not really.
Instead, everything was neatly concentrated in one location. Then
it scattered, and is still scattering, a disorderliness far
exceeding the structural order of galaxies, stars, planets, and
life forms which have appeared in the course of the process.''
[Poul Anderson "Science & Creation" Analog, Sept 1983]

Ref the information example. It is easy to get VERY complicated
systems containing a tremendous amount of information starting from
very simple, low information systems. Two methods:

1. fractal structures - start with a very simple rule and repeat it
over and over and over. The resulting structure can be (usually
is) VERY complicated, but the formation equations can be very,
very simple. And the universe has had a long time to do so.
Example: Look at a snowflake.
2. chaos - You can get very, very complicated systems if you use
nonlinearities in the progression. That is why weather forecasting
doesn't work.

Complexity does not imply design. Recursion or nonlinearity work quite
well. And the world is recursive and very non-linear.

I went and got "Theory of Self-Reproducing Automata" by Von Neumann.
You know that it was done in 1966 before most of the chaos & fractal
work?

As an initial look, I see how this is NOT applicable to life as Micha
tried to do in < 10541 at dasys1.UUCP >. Looking at section 5.3.2
"Self-Reproducing automata" we find that, under his constraints, the
secondary (initially quiescent) automaton is identical to the parent,
except that the constructing automaton is larger, and in a sense more
complex, because the construction automaton contains the complete plan
and a unit which interprets and executes this plan. This should NOT
apply to biological forms as discussed here because:

The plan IS the unit that executes itself. In Mary's term, the life is
the language. and, what I consider more relevant The constructed
automaton IS NOT A DUPLICATE of the constructing automaton. No parent
unit that I am aware of (excluding fission reproduction, in which the
parent unit cannot be identified afterwards) is the child a
duplication of the parent. In every case that I am aware of the
constructed unit is a simpler and much smaller unit, which grows OF
ITSELF into a near-copy of the original. Since the complexity is added
AFTER the reproduction process, the reproduction process should not be
a limiting factor. Proof: watch almost ANYTHING grow up.

Therefore, while the descent is INITIALLY simpler than the parent, its
final state can be more complex. Therefore, the argument that
information theory proves that life could not have come from non-life
is invalid.

BTW: New systems of cooperating parts have evolved, and they are not
even biological. See "The Evolution of Cooperation", in particular the
computer simulations in which the routines "decide" ON THEIR OWN that
cooperation is "better".
_________________________________________________________________

Evolution violates the 2nd law of thermodynamics. 

Not true. The 2nd law of thermodynamics applies only to closed
systems. The Earth is not a closed system.

That if thermo could somehow forbid evolution, then it would also
forbid babies from growing to be adults, and parents from having
children. In fact, we are agents of entropy: we organize our bodies at
the expense of the organization of our environment, which we digest
and burn.

Creationists often (ab)use the Second Law of Thermodynamics,
apparently not realizing that it explicitly states, "...in a closed
system...". By definition, a closed system cannot contain anything
external to itself. A Creator who is entirely bounded by His own
creation seems non-sensical, and I can't imagine that many
creationists would accept such a limited God anyway. Thus, God and
Thermodynamics are mutually exclusive; to invoke the Second Law is to
claim that God left!!!!!

A subsequent portion of the outline again invokes entropy, stating
that "all species are degenerating, since disorder must increase".
Ignoring the Theological arguments for the moment, we reiterate,
"...in a CLOSED system...". Earth is hardly a closed system. To find a
LARGE source of negative entropy, one need only look upward on a clear
day. The sun delivers approximately 1 horse-power per square meter
(sorry for the mixed units, I don't recall the conversion factor to
joules/sec) of free energy to the biosphere. Likewise, meteors shower
us with several tonnes per day of extra mass, some of it in pre-biotic
form - i.e. complex carbon molecules such as formaldehyde and others.
Larger objects such as comets and Icarus class asteroid strikes
transfer huge amounts of mass, energy, and momentum to the earth.
Orbital perturbations and decay, friction from the moon's gravity, and
radioactive decay, all add to the total. Sorry, entropy as a disproof
of cosmological and biological evolution simply won't wash. Spread the
word. [It appears that, more recently, the creationists have been
hammered enough with the inapplicability of the Second Law of
Thermodynamics that they have modified it slightly -- the reference is
now to a closed _universe_, not a closed Earth; the rest of the
argument remains essentially unchanged.]

Creationists say that systems cannot self-organize because that would
violate the second law of thermodynamics, never mind that such systems
are not at equilibrium and are open systems.
_________________________________________________________________

These laws affirm the fact that the creation of matter or energy is
not know taking place, and, in fact, that the available energy of the
universe as a whole is continually running down rather than building
up. 

Point of fact, matter IS being created currently. Also destroyed. See
"virtual particles". And the "available energy of the universe as a
whole" says nothing about localities within it...
_________________________________________________________________

Various conceivable patterns fail to emerge, despite an overwhelming
tendency to diversify. 

There is always luck. If the mutation does not occur, you cannot
select for it. Evolution is not aimed. That's a deity's job. Evolution
handles the current entity, not some future not-yet-conceived entity
for some not-yet environment.
_________________________________________________________________

If life arose by chance, half of the amino acids should be
right-handed; in fact, all are left-handed. 

Once the preference for one enantiomer over another gets started in
nature, it is relatively easy to see how this preference is
perpetuated. Biological reactions work much like machines having
templates, stamping out the preferred, and ONLY the preferred
configuration generation after generation after generation.

As to how one became initially started, there are many possibilities:
1. Luck. The first one to form just happened to be L, and then the
rest followed.
2. There may be some effect during formation due to coriolis force or
the (hemisphere dependent) magnetic field (as lightening went
DOWN, the effect may be polarized)
3. Quantitative calculations indicate that the fundamentally
left-handed neutral-weak force with the electromagnetic force
could introduce an energy preference (very slight). Aside from any
steric preferences, one form could be energetically more stable
than the other.

[William C. McHarris Professor of Chemistry and of Physics and of
Astronomy at Michigan State University "Handedness in Nature" January
1986 Analog]
_________________________________________________________________

Mathematical probability: "it is so improbable that one and only one
species out of 3,0000,000 should develop into man, that it certainly
was not the case". 

Whence the 3,000,000 number, and how is the "improbability" assigned?
Some say inevitable... If 500 developed into man, how would you tell?
Besides, given the way evolution works, one would dominate and 499
would have (while developing) be suppressed, quite likely into
extinction. The "less successful" are extinct or in zoos.
_________________________________________________________________

The repeated occurrence of changes calling for numerous coordinated
innovations, both at the level of organs and of complete organisms. 

First, how do you determine that "numerous coordinated innovations"
are required? That may merely be your evaluation. For instance, some
of the common examples:

poisonous snakes - fangs & poison glands.
A Gila monster has poison glands with no fangs, and there are
snakes with furrowed fangs with no poison glands.

fish to land animal - legs and lungs.
The mudpuppy is a fish without lungs that goes on the land, and
the ceoclanth (sp) has almost legs with no lungs. And then
there is the African Lungfish, the floridian walking
catfish,...

Coral snakes (southern US) don't have a very sophisticated delivery
system - they also chew on their victims to deliver the poison. I'm
not very familiar with the anatomy of a coral snake, but it does not
have the usual "fangs" associated in the popular mind with a poisonous
snake - as I recall there is just a small sac or pore at the base of
what look like ordinary reptilian teeth.

The last time I studied poisonous snakes (some years ago), it was
thought that poison delivery had evolved several times, independently,
in snakes. This was based on differences in toxins and in delivery
systems, as well as its occurrence in otherwise distantly related
snakes, all of which have closely similar non-poisonous forms. The
delivery systems cover the whole range from the simple, rather
typical, teeth of the coral snake to the elaborate, retractile,
tubular fangs of pit-vipers. Some have slightly elongate "fangs" with
simple grooves on one side, for instance. Thus, we can see almost the
entire range of intermediate anatomies in evolving fangs purely in
_living_ species. Gap?? What gap? We do not even need the fossils,
which we also have.

And how many of these "numerous coordinated innovations" can be caused
by one change? Check out, for instance, the effect of changing the age
at which bone growth stops in human beings.

This needs to be elaborated. If a genome is being stressed to some
metastable level where its states can multiply, then rapid changes to
more than one structure in the organism can occur simultaneously.
_________________________________________________________________

Chaos Theory 

As far as the brain obeying certain chaotic processes, the brain is
too structured and controlled to allow anything like that to occur.
Biological processes are very closely controlled in the body and in
the brain. That is necessary for survival. Reflexes are something
the brain cannot control. Your heart beats regularly and you
breathe in your sleep. Your brain releases hormones at just the
right moment to allow you to run away from a lion, or, when
cornered, fight off an attacker with more strength than you thought
you had. When you consider the mind as it is usually defined (the
thinking, conscious part of the brain), it must also function
properly at all times, or you would not be able to survive.
Evolutionary pressures would not favor a mind which works on a
process based on chaos theory.

The connection of chaos with complex real living systems is
circumstantial, but suggestive. I do not have a firm demonstration
that full-blown living processes are adequately described by systems
of nonlinear differential equations. Two examples I have heard about,
I do not have references, are human brain waves can be modeled with a
strange attractor, and a good model of cardiac electrical function and
sudden failure has been built using chaos.
_________________________________________________________________

The fundamental principle of evolution - the concept of development,
with increasing organization and complexity - seems to be essentially
contradictory to the impregnably established laws of energy
conservation and deterioration. 

Huh? If by "development" he means adaption to the environment I have
no idea what "increasing organization and complexity" is fundamental
for. And maybe by "deterioration" he means "entrophy or enthalpy"?
_________________________________________________________________

We have never seen any natural processes which result in a complexity
increase. 

This is easy. Are you familiar with a small creature called a
"Volvox"? This is a small spherical animal that lives in the water and
is made up of individual cells of algae.

Separate algae cells have been observed organizing into a Volvox, with
the advantage of being able to propel itself in a way similar to an
octopus, and capture food inside the sphere. The algae cells operate
in a unified manner, just as the cells in a larger organism do.

Here is a clear example of increased complexity for the sake of
survival. Since mutation is factual (i.e. we have observed mutation,
so it is not conjecture), why do you find it so hard to believe that
increasingly complex organizations of cells, combined with favorable
mutations, can result in a higher form of life?

I have a biological example. The cat in my house has a pair of extra
toes growing inward on both of its forepaws. This is not unknown, and
I have seen it before. Even more interesting, I have seen the cat use
those extra toes as a human would use a thumb to grip small objects,
such as a penny, in a manner that a cat with ordinary forepaws could
not. A new part, adapted from an old part that all others of the
species has. A new ability that others of the species doesn't have. An
increase in complexity in a biological context.

jap2_ss at uhura.cc.rochester.edu
_________________________________________________________________

The great complexity of nature shows it was designed. Laws require a
lawmaker; organization requires an organizer. 

No, it doesn't. The patterns within a kaleidoscope are very complex,
and extremely organized (in the sense of symmetrical patterning) but
are not designed.
_________________________________________________________________

There is not the slightest genuine evidence of biological life as we
understand it anywhere else in the universe. 

There are a LOT of complex chemicals of extraterrestrial origins
composed of carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and I think even a bit of
sulfur. And the Viking has found some odd reactions. And if you don't
mind taking environmental conditions more alien than mars as
"elsewhere", I have seen some dandy pictures of things that sure look
like life in eternal blackness, no oxygen, hotter than a pot of
boiling water,...
_________________________________________________________________

Evolution doesn't explain abiogenesis or how genes are expressed. 

To the creationists. And it does explain how to study the unknown,
rather than bowing out.
_________________________________________________________________

All of my statements, past, present and future express solely my
opinions and/or beliefs and do not in any way represent those of
any of my employer's unless such is specifically stated in the
content of the text.

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