Skeptic Blog

rcomian:

The evidence of design in the DNA molecule and the irreducible complexity of the cell seems to be overwhelming. Again, even biologists like Richard Dawkins acknowledge this. In fact, there are some biologists who *are* almost tempted to explain this apparent design by appealing to space aliens. 

This is a standard canard that I want to address. For some reason I can’t reblog the original post, so I’m just throwing it up there.

Complexity is often cited as a reason to deny evolution. Often there are vast numbers thrown in for good measure and statistics about how incredibly unlikely it is for certain forms to have been created.

I like to picture the world as it was when life first took hold. A huge planet, with vast raw resources for life to consume. Even assuming life only arose in one location, as soon as it was at all viable the only thing it would do is spread. Spread massively over all the oceans of the earth. Simple starting forms, probably little more complex than crystals, not even forming the neat lines of common descent that we commonly think of today. Basically a massive, boiling furnace of creativity.

It was about a billion years after the earth formed that life took hold. Life was this teaming mass of single celled organisms, flooding all the oceans of the earth and eventually covering any nook and cranny on the land. Cells which reproduce about every 20 minutes. In some of the most hostile conditions we can imagine. For 3 billion years.

Eventually multicellular life became viable. The earth became more hospitable to larger creatures due to oxygen and plants. Earth was basically tamed. 

The cells we see today are not the result of the nice stable lifestyles we have these days as humans. They’re the result of a 3 billion year experiment where almost every point on the surface of the earth and almost all the volume of the oceans produced a new guess every 20 minutes. Always with only the most effective solutions surviving. You could be the most advanced, most successful organism at sunrise and obsolete by nightfall.

New solutions built on old solutions. Disused solutions being discarded if they had a cost and hanging around if they were free. Old solutions being partially re-used in new ways. Not by design, by shear brute force and volume.

Every single animal alive today has had approximately 3.5 billion years of forming.

And you expect that to be simple?

Simple was the first decade.