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Our future, our universe, and other weighty topics


Monday, September 30, 2019

"Accidental Engineering" Sounds Goofy, So They Use the Term "Adaptions"

Humans have never observed a case of a very complex piece of engineering arising by accident. For example, we know of no cases of nice livable houses that arose from trees accidentally falling and forming into houses. We also know of no cases of trees accidentally falling to form into nice flat bridges.  Occasionally a tree will fall in a way that provides a kind of bridge across a stream, but something so simple cannot really be called a case of accidental engineering.  A fallen tree spanning a stream just resembles a fallen tree, not some feat of engineering. 

Therefore, the phrase "accidental engineering" has a very implausible sound to it, rather like the phrase "accidental writing" or "accidental computer programming."  But it is just such a concept of accidental engineering that our current biologists want us to believe in. They want us to believe that such accidental engineering occurred not just once or twice, but very many times,  so many times that there were billions of cases of accidental engineering that explain all of the complex biological innovations discovered in the biological world.  

Imagine if one of today's biologists were to explain such a dogma without using euphemisms.  He might sound something like this:

"We should be glad that so very many cases of accidental engineering occurred to produce the parts of the human body. You can see things because of some accidental engineering that produced your eyes, and because of some very different accidental engineering that produced the parts of your brain involved in vision. You have a circulatory system because of entirely different cases of accidental engineering. Then there are the many cases of accidental engineering that conspired by chance to produce your skeletal system, and the many other cases of accidental engineering that randomly conspired to produce your intricate muscular system. On the molecular level, your body is made up of proteins, and there are more than 20,000 different types of proteins used by your body. Each of these types of protein molecules is like its own separate complex invention, a complex tiny machine or device with hundreds of amino acid parts fitting together in just the right way to produce a particular functional effect. So it seems that there were some 20,000 cases of very lucky accidental engineering that produced all of the protein molecules your body needs."

Such a statement sounds very far-fetched. So Darwinist biologists don't write statements like the statements above, although they believe exactly what is stated in the statement above.  Instead, Darwinist biologists use a euphemism: the word "adaption." For example, a Darwinist biologist may tell you that your eyes are an adaption, and that your visual cortex is an adaption, and that your nose is an adaption, and that your skeletal system is an adaption, and that your circulatory system is an adaption, and that your fingers and toes are adaptions. 

Of course, the term "adaption" is about the least objectionable-sounding term you can use. Who can dispute that adaption occurs? Every day we see adaptions occurring around us. I hear on the TV that it's cold outside today, so I wear a jacket. That's an adaption. I taste my morning coffee, and find it's too hot. So I stir it. That's an adaption. Given that we see adaption occurring constantly around us,  it's very unlikely that anyone will ever say something like "Adaptions are so rare."  But when our biologists euphemistically use the word "adaption," what they are usually referring to are claims of accidental engineering, which is something so rare that humans have never observed it as it happened. 

A dogmatic biologist using the term "adaption" for his claim of accidental engineering is somewhat like a person who wants you to believe that certain people have superpowers like in comic books, but who tries to make this sound like a not-unreasonable claim by using the euphemistic term "capability fluctuations" for his claim about superpowers. 

EUPHEMISM MEANING
“Friendly fire” When a soldier from your army shoots or bombs other soldiers from your army
“Collateral damage” When bombs dropped from military jets kill civilians unexpectedly
“Beginning a journey of self-discovery” Fired
“Correctional facility” Prison
“On an educational hiatus” Dropped out of college
“Adaptions” Complex biological innovations described as the results of accidental engineering


What is rather amusing is that the people who make these fanciful  claims about accidental engineering are in general people who know nothing about engineering, and who never did any engineering.  Their ignorance of the most basic principles of engineering is often obvious.  Just as we can use a term such as "hydrodynamics know-nothing" to refer to someone like myself who knows nothing about hydrodynamics, it is in general true that Darwinist biologists are "engineering know-nothings," because they know nothing about engineering.  It is rather hilarious that such "engineering know-nothings"  often insist that we should base our world-views on their engineering opinions, such as the opinion that wonderful cases of accidental engineering have occurred innumerable times. 

Below we see a schematic diagram of a complex system like we find all over the place in biology, a system with so many interlocking dependencies that it seems impossible to imagine how it could have arisen accidentally.  Such systems raise an abundance of "which came first, the chicken or the egg" problems, problems that our learned biologists ignore or sweep under the rug.  

complex system

Examples of such biological things with interlocking dependencies include the many types of protein molecules that cannot fold correctly and cannot be functional unless there exist other types of  helper protein molecules (called chaperone proteins).  The source here estimates that 20 percent to 30 percent of protein molecules have a dependency on other chaperone proteins. When we do not consider the chaperone-dependency of such protein molecules, we might calculate a probability on the order of no more than about 1 in 10130 of the protein molecule appearing by chance from its component amino acids (since the gene for a protein molecule is typically a sequence of hundreds of amino acids, and such a sequence can be arranged in 10260 ways, almost all nonfunctional).  When we then consider the dependency of such a molecule on one or more other equally complex molecules (a chaperone protein molecule),  we must calculate a much, much smaller probability of the protein and its chaperones appearing, probably something as improbable as 1 chance in 10 to the two-hundredth power.  We are asked to believe that such miracles of chance (each an impressive example of accidental engineering) occurred not just once but billions of times, for there are billions of different types of protein molecules in the animal kingdom (the source here estimates 50 billion), and 20 percent of them require chaperone proteins.  This is rather like believing in some planet where billions of people all live in houses that appeared accidentally, after many billions of falling trees conveniently formed into houses. 

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