Let’s consider the building of a house and use the intelligent design logic as a way to understand this problem. The human body is immensely and immeasurably more complicated than a house because chemical ‘parts’ are far more difficult to produce and use than physical parts. However the same logic of intelligent design applies to both and physical parts are easier to understand and explain.
A house has many systems and is analogous to the systems of the human body. The structural system of the house with all the framing is like the skeletal system. The electrical system is like the neurologic system. The water pipes coming into the home are like the digestive system, and the septic system is like the kidneys and intestines excreting wastes. Insulation is like fat. The security system monitors for intruders like the immune system and the central vacuum cleans up like other parts of the immune system. If you can’t build a house one step at a time, with the evolutionary requirement that each step makes something that is both useful and better, then there is no way life could have formed this way either.
Can a house be built one step at a time? The construction of this home will be very different than what builders are used to. The process cannot proceed knowing that at the end there will be a house. Each step from the beginning must meet the four evolutionary requirements.
1. There is only one step at a time.
2. Each step is the result of a random chance mistake.
3. Each step must make something useful.
4. Each step must make something better.
To ‘build’ a human each of the parts themselves must be made but for this exercise we will make it simple and not even worry about how this would happen. Let’s just assume that all the parts for a house are somehow at the construction site, they only need to be assembled. In man this information of how to make the parts as well as the assembly instructions is in the DNA, which is like the blueprints of a construction project. Just like a house cannot be built without a plan, man cannot be made without the information in the DNA. This aspect of DNA is so critical to creation science that it is discussed separately in the next controversy, but here we see how it also overlaps with intelligent design.
For this mental exercise we will assume all of the parts to build a house are already present and disregard the even more difficult problem of how to get parts from nothing in the first place. If you cannot imagine how a house can be built one step at a time without violating any of the four evolutionary requirements, then you cannot logically believe that evolution is possible to build life one step at a time.
The construction of a house typically would begin with the plan. Here there is no plan, just random chance mistakes. Set before you are tens of thousands of pieces of wood, nails, wires, pipes, concrete mix, sheetrock, paint, flooring, shingles, light switches, outlets, windows, toilets, glue, caulking, insulation, and all the rest. You have everything needed, even all the tools and power. Now imagine all these parts strewn across the field with no part on top of another. This would fill many acres of land. Now the construction process begins. You can randomly take any two pieces and put them together. You cannot look and see what two pieces might make something better, you have to be blindfolded and randomly pick two pieces. If it makes something useful you can continue, if not you must start again.
In this process you might have any imaginable two pieces. A piece of wire and a piece of wood, useless, discard and try again. An outlet cover and a nail, useless and start again. If you could randomly get two pieces that are useful you could continue to add a third piece. At this step there are additional requirements of evolution. It must make something both useful and better than the previous step. Even if the addition of a third piece makes something useful, it would still not be enough because it must also make something better. This requirement is so that there will be a ‘survival advantage’ to the new collection of parts. This process must continue for tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of steps. This process must continue until the house is complete. Each step adding one random part from the field and must make something useful and better. Do you think this could ever end up in a home? Never! The problem is the usefulness requirement and the fact that systems work within other systems.
The systems in a home are like the organ systems in a human. Humans have a skeletal system for support, a neurologic system for communication, an immune system for security, a kidney for filtering, a heart for pumping, and a brain for thinking. A house has these same types of systems. There is framing for support, an electrical system for signaling, a security system for monitoring, a plumbing system for water and a septic system for waste. Each of these systems is made up of many parts. You cannot build any one of these systems with the four evolutionary requirements, but even if you did none of these systems has any use by itself. Each of these systems needs all the other systems complete to have any usefulness, and without usefulness it would not evolve and would not exist.
So the first level of impossibility in this example is how you would get any part through a DNA mutation. The second level of impossibility is that even if an enormous number of these parts somehow are made, they still could never end up making any system since they would have to be assembled one at a time with each step making something both useful and better. The third level of impossibility is that even if any one system is made, there is still no use for it without all the other systems also working. Every part of any one system has to be completed for the system to work, and every system has to be completed for there to be life. There is no way for any system to be formed in this manner, and even if it did happen there would be no use for it by itself anyway! Everything must be together at the same time to work but this can never happen with the four evolutionary requirements.
Think about this problem in building a house. The framing of a house begins with pieces of wood and nails. You would have to assemble two pieces of wood to have something useful. It cannot be for the ultimate purpose of structural support. It would have to support something immediately. Then a third piece of wood would be added to make a larger part and this part must be both useful as well and be better than the first two pieces. The problem in terms of systems is there is no purpose of the framing by itself. Even if the framing is completed it is useless by itself and therefore could never have ‘evolved’.
The usefulness of a home is the ability of a family to live in it. The framing has no purpose unless there is also the electrical system, water pipes, sheetrock, flooring, roofing and all the other systems are complete. The same is true for the electrical system. It is complex by itself being made of individual part of wires, connections, relays, light fixtures, outlets, bulbs, and more. However, the electrical system is only useful when complete in the home, and is also useless by itself. The electrical system only becomes useful in the home when the entire home is done. You cannot turn a light on without flipping the switch, the switch needs sheetrock on the wall, the sheetrock cannot be placed until the insulation is in the wall, and you can’t put the insulation in until the framing is done which can’t be started until the foundation is complete. You can’t flush the toilet until the commode is there, which needs the flooring complete, which is placed on top of the framing, which is on the foundation and all of this needs water pipes coming in the home and a septic system draining fluids out. There is no point to the septic system unless all these other systems complete. There is no purpose of any system without all the other systems and each system is made of hundreds or thousands of parts and every one of these parts in every one of these systems has no purpose by itself until everything is completed and organized together. A house cannot be built this way.
This logic is true of every system. Each system is complex by itself, but is related to other equally complex systems. There is layered complexity that prevents individual usefulness when assembled sequentially. This problem only gets more and more complicated when thinking about biologic systems rather than physical systems made of these types of parts.
The nervous system has no purpose by itself and is very complicated by itself. The immune system has no purpose by itself and is very complicated by itself. The cardiovascular system has no purpose by itself and is very complicated by itself. The respiratory system has no purpose by itself and is very complicated by itself. Each system in a human has no purpose by itself and is very complicated by itself. For life to exist these systems have to work in a coordinated way and it is not reasonable to believe these complex and interrelated systems developed with the severe restrictions of evolution
The four evolutionary requirements are not controversial and evolutionists and creationists agree:
1. There is only one step at a time.
2. Each step is the result of a random chance mistake.
3. Each step must make something useful.
4. Each step must make something better.
It is for you to decide if you believe that complex biologic systems of life could possibly have ‘evolved’ in this way. Evolutionists still agree with the statement of Darwin:
“If it could be demonstrated that any complex organ existed, which could not possibly have been formed by numerous, successive, slight modifications, my theory would absolutely break down.”
Three levels of impossibility have been presented. All of these are persuasive. One of these involves the modifications of ‘parts’ for them to be functional. These are necessary conditions.
It is a published fact in peer reviewed scientific journals that the modifications required before these complexes of biologic systems can be assembled is unexplained.
The Rhodes Scholarships are postgraduate awards supporting outstanding all-round students at the University of Oxford. Illusionists are experts who are able to entertain by making us believe we have seen the impossible. You do not need to be a Rhodes Scholar or an illusionist to believe:
If complex systems cannot be developed one step at a time with the requirement that each step is the result of a random chance mistake, each step creates a structure that is useful, and each step makes something better to give a survival advantage, then evolution logically cannot be possible.
FURTHER STUDY
A complex example of the interrelatedness of biologic systems is presented in Consider the Act of Breathing. You will be amazed at what all is involved just to take a single breath.