Group
Here is an example of what I call the `construction project' design argument,
in this case the reptilian egg.
Koestler (a non-theist writes):
"To conclude this section, here is a less dramatic example of an
evolutionary advance - the seemingly modest step which led to the
transformation of the amphibian egg into the reptilian egg. I have
described this process in The Ghost in the Machine, and am quoting
it again, because its explanation by the Darwinian schema is not
only vastly improbable, but logically impossible.
The vertebrates' conquest of dry land started with the evolution of
reptiles from some primitive amphibian form. The amphibians
reproduced in the water, and their young were aquatic. The decisive
novelty of the reptiles was that, unlike amphibians, they laid their
eggs on dry land; they no longer depended on the water and were
free to roam over the continents. But the unborn reptile inside the
egg still needed an aquatic environment: it had to have water or else
it would dry up at an early stage. It also needed a lot of food:
amphibians hatch as larvae who fend for themselves, whereas
reptiles hatch fully developed. So the reptilian egg had to be
provided with a Large mass of yolk for food, and also with albumen
the white of egg - to provide the water. Neither the yolk by itself,
nor the egg-white itself, would have had any selective value.
Moreover, the eggwhite needed a vessel to contain it, otherwise its
moisture would have evaporated. So there had to be a shell made of
a leathery or limey material, as part of the evolutionary package-
deal. But that is not the end of the story. The reptilian embryo,
because of this shell, could not get rid of its waste products. The
soft-shelled amphibian embryo had the whole pond as a lavatory;
the reptilian embryo had to be provided with a kind of bladder. It is
called the allantois, and is in some respects the forerunner of the
mammalian placenta. But this problem having been solved, the
embryo would still remain trapped inside its tough shell; it needed a
tool to get out. The embryos of some fishes and amphibians, whose
eggs are surrounded by a gelatinous membrane, have glands on
their snouts: when the time is ripe, they secrete a chemical which
dissolves the membrane. but embryos surrounded by a hard shell
need a mechanical tool: thus snakes and lizards have a tooth
transformed into a kind of tin-opener, while birds have a caruncle -
a hard outgrowth near the tip of their beaks which serves the same
purpose and is later shed by the adult animal. (Koestler A., "The
Ghost in the Machine," London, 1967, pp.128-129).
Now according to the Darwinian schema, all these changes must
have been gradual, each small step caused by a chance mutation.
But it is obvious that each step, however small, required
simultaneous, interdependent changes affecting all the factors
involved in the story. Thus the liquid store in the albumen could not
be kept in the egg without the hard shell. But the shell would be
useless, in fact murderous, without the allantois and without the tin-
opener. Each of these changes, if they had occurred alone, would
have been harmful, and the organisms thus affected would have
been weeded out by natural selection (or rather, as suggested
above, by 'natural elimination'). You cannot have an isolated
mutation A, preserve it over an incalculable number of generations
until mutation B occurs in the same lineage and so on to C and D.
Each single mutation would be wiped off the slate before it could
be combined with all the others. They are all interdependent within
the organist which is a functional whole, and not a mosaic. The
doctrine that the coming together of all requisite changes was due
to a series of coincidences is an affront not only to common sense
but to the basic principles of scientific explanation."
(Koestler A., "Janus: A Summing Up," [1978], Picador: London, 1983,
reprint, pp.175-176)
It is my firm contention that these examples (and there are a number of
them) of what I call "construction projects," where a number of unrelated
components appear to be assembled well in advance towards a long-term
goal, cannot *even in principle* be explained by unintelligent natural
processes of *any* sort.
Some (or even all?) individual components may be able to be explained by
unintelligent natural processes, but the *whole project*, I claim, cannot be
adequately explained without invoking a far-sighted Intelligent Designer.
I claim that these `construction projects' defeat *all* naturalistic (including
deistic and `front-loaded' theistic) evolutionary explanations.
They are therefore IMHO the *ultimate* design argument! I confidently
make a falsifiable scientific prediction that *no amount* of scientific
advance will *ever* be able to explain this class of phenomena by
unintelligent natural processes.
I predict that all that can be done by anti-designists is to either deny that
these "construction projects" exist on materialistic/naturalistic
philosophical grounds and try to ignore them altogether; or else baptise
them by force as `evolution' while using the language of design (see
tagline).
Steve
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"THE LAND EGG or reptilian egg, as it is also called has a very special
place in the story of life as it lived on earth. The land egg is one of nature's
greatest innovations. It made possible the conquest of the land, first by
reptiles and then by birds and mammals. If the land egg had not developed,
the land would have remained largely empty except for plants, invertebrate
life and amphibians. As we have seen, amphibians are not strictly land
animals; they cannot venture far from water, and most must return to the
water to lay their soft, jelly-coated eggs. Some time after the first
amphibians developed, evolution took a decisive leap forward. The first
reptiles invaded the land. (The word "reptile" is derived from the Latin root
repere, to creep or crawl.) These first reptiles, which had evolved from the
amphibians, were able to do so because they had acquired an egg that
could be laid and incubated on land. This land or reptilian egg was much
more complicated than the simple amphibian egg. The water cradled and
protected the amphibian egg against mechanical injury and desiccation. The
developing amphibian got its oxygen and most of its food from the water,
and its waste matter was discharged into the water. A land egg if it was to
be successful had to provide everything the water had." (Stivens D., "The
Incredible Egg: A Billion Year Journey," Weybright & Talley: New York
NY, 1974, pp.168-169)
Stephen E. Jones | Ph. +61 8 9448 7439 | http://www.iinet.net.au/~sejones
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