Member-only story
Evolution Is Not Random — It Has a Feedback Loop
The eye seems to be the de facto object as something complex enough to require a designer. But, it arose from naturals processes yielding small improvements over time.
I keep seeing all this stuff about intelligent design and that such things couldn’t possibly appear by chance. One video was about how proteins fold, for example. The number of possible folding sites in the molecule with two choices per site or some such scheme yielded so many possibilities that the correct folded state couldn’t be found even with millions of years of trying. Thus, they then jump to the conclusion that God folded it because that’s the only way it could be found since randomness would never find it.
Well, we never go from A to B in reality. The path from A to B has many smaller steps, and organisms make small gains at each step. Evolution works on large time scales, so many lifetimes come and go with the better equipped organisms getting their offspring to continue. More time goes by and more small steps to point B are made with the organisms benefitting all along.
Today, we humans get to look at the complexity of an eye or a leaf (things that made it finally to point B) or even a properly folded protein structure and say, “God must have designed that beautiful thing.” When all along we just look at the thing and not understand the long journey it took to get here.
There is a correcting mechanism in place — survival. Changes that enhance survival stick around. This is not God designing, but rather, the species adapting to things that enable it to survive.
This is the missing piece in these debates that I see. I may expand on this later with actual research to back it up.
Thanks for reading me.
