The Continent Explorers: An Analogy

On a distant planet in another solar system there was a single continent, inhabited on its eastern side by a proud race of seven-feet-tall beings. Their ideology held that they were the only inhabitants of their continent. But the western part of the continent had never been explored.  One day the inhabitants of the eastern side of the continent sent out an exploration expedition, with the goal of finally determining what was on the west side of the continent. The expedition was led by a famous scientist, and consisted of seven males and one woman. 

The scientist had predicted that no intelligent creatures would be discovered on the west side of the continent. But at one point in the long journey the explorers saw something that seemed to challenge such an idea. Traveling on a long flat plane, they seemed to see miles ahead of them what looked rather like a huge castle far away.

"Look on the horizon!" exclaimed a woman. "I think that maybe that's some huge building, like a castle."

"Foolish woman!" said the scientist. "What you see on the horizon is merely a distant mountain, a mere accident of nature."

"I guess we'll find out for sure when we get closer," said the woman. 

The exploration party walked further towards the high object on the horizon.  Very soon a tragic event occurred. The scientist who was the expedition leader was attacked by a four-legged predator, and bled to death. The exploration party buried him, and then continued to walk on towards the interesting tall object on the horizon. 

Soon the woman noted that the tall object on the horizon now appeared to be even more clearly what looked like a high castle, not a mountain. 

"Look, the tall object on the horizon seems to be like some mighty castle," said the woman. "It can't be a mountain." 

"But the great scientist told us it was just a mountain, a mere accident of nature," said the scientist's assistant. "We must follow his wise teaching."

The exploration party walked further towards the high object on the horizon. The woman noted that the tall object on the horizon now appeared to be even more clearly some artificial construction. She noticed strange things she had never seen before on any building: electrical lighting. Her people had not yet invented electrical lights. 

"Look at those strange lights like none we have ever seen," said the woman. "This must be a work of great agency and artistry. It can't be a mountain." 

"But the great scientist told us it was just a mountain," said the scientist's assistant. "We must follow his wise teaching."

The exploration party walked further towards the high object on the horizon. The woman now noted that the tall object on the horizon appeared to have things she had never seen of nor heard of: elevators, helicopters and huge video screens on its outside. She could also see with her spy glass some great library that seemed to store vast amounts of information.

"Look at those astonishing wonders on the building," said the woman. "This is not only some work of great agency and artistry, but something far beyond anything our people could ever construct." 

"But the great scientist told us it was just a mountain, a mere accident of nature," said the scientist's assistant. "We must follow his wise teaching."

The situation described is an analogy for what has gone in biology since about the time of Charles Darwin. Around 1850 scientists seemed to see before them great evidence that the wonders of biology were not mere accidents of nature, but the work of some agency far greater than mankind.  Fine-tuned anatomical structures had been discovered abundantly. But in 1859 Charles Darwin introduced his theory that the wonders of biology were caused by purely natural processes such as random variations and the survival of the fittest. Introducing such a theory, Darwin was like the scientist of my story who sees in the far distance something that might be a castle or a mountain, and who says that it is merely a mountain, not anything the result of agency or design. 

The progression of the explorers closer and closer to the great castle is an analogy for the progression of biology in the 160 years since 1859. Just as the explorers in my story learned more and more about the castle as they walked closer and closer to it, biologists have learned more and more about the wonders of biology. Below is a table of what we now know.  The items in yellow are facts that Darwin never knew about during his lifetime.

HUMANS CONSIST OF HUMAN BODIES AND HUMAN MINDS.	Human minds have displayed a vast number of capabilities, many of which mainstream scientists fail to properly study.
HUMAN BODIES MAINLY CONSIST OF ORGAN SYSTEMS AND A SKELETAL SYSTEM.	The human skeletal system contains 206 bones.
ORGAN SYSTEMS CONSIST OF ORGANS AND SUPPORTING STRUCTURES.	Examples of organ systems include the circulatory system (consisting of much more than just the heart), and the nervous system consisting of much more than just the brain.
ORGANS CONSIST OF TISSUES.
TISSUES CONSIST OF VERY COMPLEX AND VASTLY ORGANIZED  CELLS	There are more than 200 types of cells in the human body, each a different type of system of enormous organization. Cells are so complex they have been compared to factories with many types of manufacturing devices.
CELLS TYPICALLY CONSIST OF VERY COMPLEX MEMBRANES AND THOUSANDS OR MILLIONS OF ORGANELLES.	A cell diagram will typically depict a cell as having only a few mitochondria, but cells typically have many thousands of mitochondria, as many as a million. A cell diagram will typically depict a cell as having only a few lysosomes, but cells typically have hundreds of lysosomes. A cell diagram will typically depict a cell as having only a few ribosomes, but a cell may have up to 10 million ribosomes. A cell diagram will typically depict one or a few stacks of a Golgi apparatus, each with only a few cisternae. But a cell will typically have between 10 and 20 stacks, each having as many as 60 cisternae.
ORGANELLES CONSIST OF VERY MANY PROTEIN MOLECULES AND PROTEIN MOLECULE COMPLEXES.	There are some 100,000 different types of protein molecules in the human body, each a different type of complex invention. Protein molecule complexes are groups of different types of protein molecules that work together as team members to achieve a function that cannot be achieved by only one of the proteins in the complex. Very many protein complexes have so many parts working together dynamically that such complexes are now being called "molecular machines."
PROTEIN MOLECULES CONSIST OF HUNDREDS OR THOUSANDS OF WELL-ARRANGED AMINO ACIDS, EXISTING IN A FOLDED THREE-DIMENSIONAL SHAPE.	Small changes in the sequences of amino acids in a protein are typically sufficient to ruin the usefulness of the protein molecule, preventing it from folding in the right way to achieve its function.  See "The Fragility of Fine-Tuned Protein Molecules" section of the post here for quotes stating this.
AMINO ACIDS CONSIST OF ABOUT 10 ATOMS ARRANGED IN SOME SPECIFIC WAY.	Some amino acids have 20 atoms. Given 10+ atoms in amino acids, and an average of about 470 amino acids per human protein molecule, a human protein molecule contains an average of about 5000+ very well-arranged atoms. Amino acids in living things are almost all left-handed, although amino acids forming naturally will with 50% likelihood be right-handed.
ATOMS CONSIST OF MULTIPLE PROTONS, NEUTRONS AND ELECTRONS.	A carbon atom has 6 protons, 6 neutrons, and 6 electrons.

We are now in a situation where it is very clear that the wonders of biology are far greater in their hierarchical organization and fine-tuned dynamic complexity than anything that humans have ever constructed. An aircraft carrier is a less impressive work of fine-tuned organization than the human body. Humans know how to make aircraft carriers equipped with all of their aircraft. There is not a corporation in the world or a nation in the world that could construct from lifeless materials a living adult human body. It is notable that humans are completely incapable of creating machines that can reproduce themselves.  There is not a robot in the world capable of building from raw materials a robot just like itself. But self-reproduction is something that occurs throughout the world of biology, as does molecular machinery. 

Like the castle in my analogy, containing some vast library that the woman could spot with her spyglass, biological organisms contain vast libraries of functional information in their DNA. What we see in biological organism are massive numbers of engineering effects and endless examples of information-rich fine-tuned architecture. Such a reality makes nineteenth century explanations of biology origins sound like  old wives' tales. Ink splashes don't produce long functional essays telling how to perform complex tasks; accidents don't engineer things; and random variations don't create novel astonishing works of information-rich fine-tuned architecture. It is not true that we can explain such wonders of biology by a simple principle of "random variations occur, and nature saves the good stuff," because most of the good stuff we see  requires arrangements of atoms so improbable you would never get such good stuff from random variations.  The reason that would never happen is pretty much the same as the reason why ink splashes don't produce well-written essays telling how to do complex things. 

But our scientists keep senselessly claiming that the wonders of biology are not the product of intelligent agency, but mere accidents of nature, as accidental as mountains. They keep telling us that we must follow opinions of the scientist Darwin, reached around the year 1859. The scientists who do that are like the assistant scientist in my story, who asked the team to follow some opinion reached when the castle was a blur on the horizon, instead of forming an opinion based on what we now know to exist.  The assistant scientist in my story was advising the group: don't decide based on what you now see clearly, but decide based on what some dead guy thought when the picture was so much blurrier. And that is very much like what is going on when scientists tell us to not judge based on the current known realities of biology, but to follow some opinion first formed before we knew half of the relevant facts we now know.