Information science refutes Rationalist claims for evolution

Although seldom reported in the media, things have gone from bad to worse for evolution.  As early as the 1960s in the authoritative Journal of Theoretical Biology, two information scientists undermined key evolutionary assumptions.  Dr Lee Spetner’s work[1] appeared in 1964 and then in 1966, Dr Michael Hasofar[2] built on Spetner’s findings.

Other mathematicians joined the fray in a symposium at the Wistar Institute of Anatomy and Biology in April 1966, challenging evolutionists to discuss the problems of their theory.  The resulting record of proceedings[3] shows the extent of the problems.  Those grave flaws in evolutionary thinking have never been adequately addressed.

Richard Dawkins’ much vaunted computer simulations in “The Blind Watchmaker” were comprehensively demolished by Lee Spetner’s careful quantitative analysis in “Not by Chance.”[4]  In an understated review of Spetner’s book, Professor E. Simon of Purdue University says: “It is certainly the most rational attack on evolution that I have ever read.”[5]

Indeed, Spetner’s approach has the potential to be a significant nail in evolution’s coffin.  After laying out his case, Spetner chides:

“… there is no evidence that genetic information can build up through a series of small steps of microevolution.  Mutations needed for these small steps have never been observed.  By far, most observed mutations have been harmful to the organism.  We have seen that there are some point mutations that, under the right circumstances, do give the organism an advantage.  There are point mutations that make bacteria resistant to antibiotics.  There are some that make insects resistant to insecticides.  There are some that increase quantitative traits in farm plants and animals.  But all these mutations reduce the information in the gene by making a protein less specific.  They add no information, and they add no new molecular capability.  Indeed, all mutations studied destroy information.  None of them can serve as an example of a mutation that can lead to the large changes of macroevolution.

“The neo-Darwinians would like us to believe that large evolutionary changes can result from a series of small events if there are enough of them.  But if these events all lose information they can’t be the steps in the kind of evolution the NDT (neo-Darwinian Theory) is supposed to explain, no matter how many mutations there are.  Whoever thinks macroevolution can be made by mutations that lose information is like the merchant who lost a little money on every sale but thought he could make it up on volume.”[6]

So information science has now shown that evolution’s theoretical framework is unable to achieve even Darwin’s limited goal of explaining how simple species gave rise to complex species.  As for the more romantic goal of explaining the origins of life itself, Darwin said from the outset that his theory did not do that.

In any case, discoveries in molecular biology are pointing beyond evolution.  Every living cell contains a DNA molecule, which in humans has 3 billion carefully sequenced instructions for building every kind of cell in the body.  DNA is the most densely packed information in the known universe.

Science accepts that intelligent beings are the only known source of information.  That principle, for example, underpins the Search for Extra Terrestrial Life (SETI).

Heavily funded, SETI is a pet programme of rationalists.  It monitors electromagnetic emissions from outer space because rationalists believe that if ever we detect information (even just several bits) being repeated in those emissions it will prove that intelligent life exists elsewhere in the universe.

Yet when DNA’s vast store of information was discovered, rationalists refused to draw the only rational conclusion: that an intelligent being is the source of DNA’s 3 billion instructions.  It is a pill too bitter for them to swallow because rationalist scientists have sought a materialistic explanation of origins since the 19^th century.