It's been awhile since I wrote anything, mainly because I feel like I've covered 'everything' and any new posts will just be a rehashing of what I've already written about. But it's news time. For naturalistic evolutionists, news has come out that is quite devastating to basic Darwinism. Two different news items need to be discussed.
ATP-Synthase Arrays in Mitochondria[1]
One is about new, efficient ATP synthase arrays in the mitochondria of basically all eukaryotic cells from yeast to fungi to humans to potatoes to protists (ancient, tiny organisms). These arrays in the cells' powerhouse are optimized for efficiency. Not only is ATP synthase efficient, but so are these arrays of them. The design is basically the same across all eukaryotic-based life. The arrays are being compared to an efficient factory for producing the energy currency of the cells. Now, to fully appreciate this find, let's remember that eukaryotic cells are thought to have formed somewhere around 2.7 Ba, with strong evidence of them around 1.7 Ba. Complex life, including even plants, didn't form until much, much later sometime around 1 Ba to 500 Ma.
The fact that all eukaryotic life has these efficient arrays indicates that the original, last common ancestor of all eukaryotes had this array. Fungi formed somewhere around 1.4 Ba, which means that this design had to have originated even earlier.
Why would a simple, lowly fungus need this efficiency for survival? (Remember, evolution does not drive greater and greater efficiency. Evolution is about the survival of the fittest organisms, supposedly. Those organisms that cannot survive well die out. All that is 'needed' for an organism is for it to be able to survive well. Designing better efficiency isn't on the agenda of evolution. We need to ask, why is there no diversity of designs across diverse organisms in the case of this ATP synthase array? This is devastating to Darwinism because such efficiency should not have evolved before it was needed! Cynobacteria lived happily for about a billion years before eukaryotic cells without this efficiency. There was no evolutionary pressure to cause this kind of efficient design in eukaryotes.
Even if there were evolutionary pressure, what happened to the less efficient designs? Organisms using the less efficient designs all died out? All of them? I'm not going to buy that idea. Plants are supposedly very inefficient in their photosynthesis, but they certainly haven't died out. They've flourished. Inefficiency -- or what we think is inefficiency -- does not necessarily result in extinction. There is no reason that eukaryotes with less efficient mitochondria should have all died out.
Keep in mind that this design that was found in the mitochondria is very efficient. We aren't talking about a so-so efficiency. Evolutionists have historically already been flabbergasted at the degree of efficiency in nature, because evolution cannot adequately account for high efficiency being relatively common in nature. Inefficiency should be the norm if evolution opporates by chance. Intuition says that it can't be purely randomness that has driven evolutionary changes. Evolution has operated way too efficiently for it not to have been designed. The idea that evolution could have improved its own efficiency over time is beyond absurd. Evolution is not intelligent or alive.
Another point is that mitochondria supposedly came from a symbiotic relationship with prokaryotes within prokaryotes. The story goes that bacteria invaded other cells and eventually, over millions of years, the invaded cells formed an unbreakable bond with the bacteria and changes happened to where the bacteria became mitochondria -- the essential powerhouse of the cells. There's one small problem with this theory: there's no evidence of the intermediate period of increasing interdependence. We don't find eukaryotes with halfway-formed mitochondria. Now we have even more evidence against this story. Mitochondria were complex and efficient from the earliest times, it would seem most plausible now. This shatters the fanciful story of increasing symbiosis and increasing efficiency. We should find cells with varying degrees of so-so efficiency in their mitochondria if this story were true. Instead, it seems much more likely that bacteria devolved from mitochondria. Such a process would more easily leave little evidence, which is what we observe.
It could be argued that these efficient arrays were needed for survival (for some unknown reason) and that is why they evolved so early. The problem is twofold: (1) they should have then died out before the efficiency randomly formed over a long time, and (2) there is no known reason why such high efficiency would be necessary for survival. And yet, because only an efficient design exists, that implies that it became necessary assuming Darwinian evolution is true. However, again, it does not seem apparent why it is needed.
All of this indicates that evolution is not responsible for the complexity in organisms. There was a Designer behind it all.
Study Says that Life May Be Rare in the Universe[2]
A new study done by evolutionists and coming out of Cornell University suggests that complex life may be exceedingly rare in the universe, despite life forming early on Earth. The implications are obvious. If this is true, then it shouts design -- or at least winning a huge cosmic lottery. But, what is acknowledged to some degree is that sentient life on Earth (e.g., you and me) has appeared on the scene none too soon. At the same time, evolution has proceeded so rapidly that it is unthinkable that sentient life could have formed sooner than it has. To sum it up, evolution has been unbelievably rapid, but if it were any slower, Earth would not be a habitable place for sentient life like us.
This raises the question that I love to harp on. How did evolution happen so quickly, like during the Cambrian Explosion, unless it were somehow programmed into the genetic makeup of organisms? It seems that evolutionists all agree that evolution got very lucky several times: (1) the formation of cellular life really early on in Earth's history, (2) the formation of multi-cellular organisms early on, (3) the explosion of diverse animal phyla, and (4) the formation of intelligent beings. All of this seems to have happened very fortuitously. The moon was helpful. The large oceans were helpful. The magnetic field. The eventual oxygen-rich atmosphere. The diversity of life allowed for a food chain. The upright walking nature of humans allowed for larger brains (theoretically). The list goes on and on. There were several near-extinction points, also, in history that would have resulted in the end of complex life if rapid evolution were not possible.
Earth is ideal for complex life. It appears as if all of history was working towards this common goal of our existence. Perhaps that was because of a wise Designer and all-knowing Creator who planned every moment of this long history of the universe. Every quanta of energy created in the early universe, when it was small, was extremely precisely placed to result in Earth forming as it has and to result in every solitary event in history. I'm not talking about a random, chaotic Big Bang from an infinitesimal point. I'm talking about a designed sphere of energy and perhaps particles that was stretched out. Then God formed the first cell(s) that also, similarly, was extremely precisely packed with every scrap of information necessary for life forming as it has and for evolution to proceed efficiently. It was a perfect plan. Doesn't that make more sense than winning a cosmic lottery that was probably not even likely to happen anywhere in the known universe?
[1] http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2011/08/04/1103621108.full.pdf+html
[2] http://arxiv.org/abs/1107.3835v1 [abstract only]
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