Mathematical Challenges to Darwin’s Theory of Evolution By Brian Simpson
It always struck me that the Neo-Darwinist hypothesis of evolution is vastly implausible, and if that epistemological basis was given to some other theory, it would be rejected. The only real mechanism for the production of new form is random genetic mutation, but to get any advantageous mutations is infinitely improbable. Surely that is grounds for rejection of the position? No-one denies that natural selection occurs, it is the vast changes between species and more, that defies explanation.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=noj4phMT9OE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FyxUwaq00Rc
“Douglas Axe raised an interesting and important problem concerning the evolution of proteins. He failed to solve it and concluded that evolution can’t have happened. His reasoning is that if you try, for a little while, to figure out how proteins evolve, and fail to find a suitable path, then proteins can’t have evolved.
Personally, I see this as an interesting biological problem and hope you share my interest in scientific mysteries.
Background
The machinery of your body is mostly made up of proteins. These can consist of hundreds of amino acids strung together. After the string has been assembled, the protein assembles itself into a complex shape as you can see in this diagram.[1]
Proteins can become useless if you change the amino acids at key points. Many proteins won’t work correctly unless they have the standard shape and that shape is the result of many individual amino acids acting together. That’s part of the reason why many mutations are harmful. It’s very easy to break something complicated so that it doesn’t work.
So, it’s hard to understand how natural selection produced the complicated 3D structures in proteins through an evolutionary trial-and-error process. One biologist has described the evolutionary process as “something like close to a miracle.”
The problem becomes worse when you think about the origin of life. The very first organisms would have needed many complicated proteins in order to live.
Douglas Axe’s contribution
He showed that simple mutations are extremely unlikely to convert the overall shape of a protein into a new useful shape. Mutations that alter the shape of a protein tend to make it unstable or useless. He concluded that since this type of evolutionary change can’t easily produce new useful proteins, then evolution can’t work.
Why he’s wrong
We know that this conclusion is wrong because scientists can trace the evolution of many individual proteins by comparing their structure and sequence of amino acids. This chart traces the ancestry of the globin family of genes among mammals and birds. The ancestor of birds and mammals must have had three different globin genes and these evolved into the several genes present in modern animals.”
That seems to me to be circular reasoning, simply assuming that evolution occurred, which is natural enough for naturalists. It does not prove its truth, though.
Comments