21. VARIOUS BITS AND PIECES
Following are various bits and pieces built on the notes i made three and a half years ago.
21.1. PROBABILITY OF FAILURE AND CONSTRAINED RANDOMNESS
Based on the examples given above with regard to the very high statistical variability that occurs within constrained spontaneity it is my understanding of the statistics that the probability of spontaneous (random) self assembly of a human being with all the documented and experienced functionality is too small to be expressed in any numerical system available to us other than in an exponential that runs into millions of leading zeroes.
All my engineering and statistical knowledge and experience says that there is absolutely no possibility whatsoever that human beings in male and female form could come into existence in terms of a model of spontaneous evolution without an external creative agency who has an overall design, prototypes individual components, designs them to fit, optimizes them and then codes the specification into DNA.
When i say it cannot be done, i am saying that the number of statistical permutations and combinations available are so great that they are "infinite" in the true sense of an open ended range of alternatives that will NEVER converge on a constrained outcome no matter how many billions of years pass.
Examples of evolution of mouse traps and computer simulations of the evolution of an eye, as used in some of the arguments for non-engineered evolution, do not in any way begin to address the magnitude of the range of statistical options that are available to the chemicals and molecules in existence to assemble themselves in ways that even begin to approximate the human body, let alone develop the detailed intellectual, emotional and other capabilities that human beings possess.
I am aware that others seem willing to offer explanations as to why the above is not valid. I cannot prove that what i have written is valid yet my entire engineering training and experience and my training and experience of statistics tell me that this is intuitively so.
I hold that there are many people who have this type of engineering experience who, if presented with the information contained above, would agree that this is so.
My engineering training leads me to conclude that this conclusion is absolute and indisputable. However, i have read articles by people with claimed reputations who suggest otherwise.
I don't know how to respond to this other than to suggest that unless someone has personally designed and supervised the creation of a complex system i do not see how they can possibly have an authoritative opinion on the subject.
In concluding this section, all i can say is that it is a matter of personal choice, check the above points out with your personal life experience and draw your own conclusions.
21.2. OTHER TOPICS IN MY NOTES
The following additional topics are covered in my notes and you are welcome to correspond with me about them. They are included in the hope that they will stimulate further avenues of inquiry for you to evaluate your position on this question.
Standards -- there is a high level of standardization and uniformity apparent in the world around us, whether the shape of planets, the shape of animals and plants, etc.
Standardization results from the imposition of a set of standards and guidelines imposed with discipline by an intelligent creative being with a clear view of the outcome that is required.
The reproductive process in all organisms on earth that i can think of is highly standardized. The children are recognizably standardized models of the parents and are not randomly variable manifestations of contorted randomly assembled elements comprising derivatives of the building blocks that represent the parents. There is constrained, that is managed and controlled, randomness that confirms to precise standards.
Configuration management and version control: The same argument as with standards apply -- there is careful configuration management in the creation of each new generation of plants, animals and humans. Something that in the world of engineering only occurs with rigorous formal training and disciplines.
Conformity between different plant varieties that produce whorls of leaves, fronds, etc: The existence of whorls of leaves and fronds in Aloes, Lilies, Ferns, Palms, and other plant types cuts across different specific lines in a way that suggests that these plants all originated through a single evolutionary path or that a creative intelligence found this model to be attractive and effective and introduced it into the design of various distinct plant families and species. Other components of these same plant families have correlation with families that do not produce leaves in whorls.
This is a huge subject and i am not qualified to comment in depth. My casual observation as someone with a basic qualification in botany is that there is not much evidence that all the plants that existed today could have evolved without some external creative influence.
Survival of the fittest in technology: Survival of the fittest appears to be a model that applies in the context of managed evolution directed by an external, engineering creative agency.
Small errors cause failure of the fittest in modern technology and survival of the fittest has as much to do with technical bestness as it does with best marketing -- the VHS versus Betamax video recording technology outcome is an example.
The technologically superior Betamax was defeated by VHS in the market on the basis of better marketing. So here we have survival of the fittest being influenced by soft issues relating to the human psyche and the response of human beings to persuasive advertising NOT mechanical survival of best practice in the context of a creative agency producing these items.
If development of complex systems is spontaneous then why do engineers and technicians need to be trained? Many of these examples beg the question as to why engineers and technicians spend three or four years at University or Technical College and then serve an apprenticeship of a further three years or more in order to learn how to design and build things that work. If the norm of the world was spontaneous non-engineered evolution then surely such training is not necessary?
Macro standardisation of humans, animals and plants: The macro standardization of humans, animals and plants is touched on above, how does this happen without an external creative agency apply engineering disciplines to constrain variability?
Cardiovascular system is a closed pressurized system: The cardiovascular system is a closed pressurized system that operates in very specific ways and if the blood pressure becomes too high or too low the organism becomes ill and may die. If primary arteries are punctured or severed death follows almost immediately. How did pressure build up in such a precise way in response to unstructured spontaneous evolution without an external creative agency with a clear view of the outcome that was required?
If survival of the fittest is the fundamental law of existence then why is murder a problem for those who support non-creative evolution? -- surely, if we live by survival of the fittest then murder is a manifestation of a more fit individual eliminating a less fit individual in support of evolution of the species and therefore cause for rejoicing? Yet there is an underlying fear of and abhorrence of murder that is the manifestation of a deep underlying set of ethics and morals in most societies. Again, this suggests a higher creative being who has instilled in us innate values that are widely regarded as appropriate.
How can fragments of exploding matter form into perfect spheres (suns and planets) with very different properties? If a "big bang" took place with the inherent picture of an explosion of sufficient force to fling fragments of materials into space, how did those fragments becomes spheres, how did some form into suns and some into planets, how did they develop trajectories of rotation around one another that are different to the radial trajectory that would result from a central explosion?
The order of the universe speaks to me again of some engineering agency that carefully fashioned each star and planet and assembled them in solar systems, etc in such a way as to create the huge diversity and beauty that we behold coupled with carefully balanced gravitational forces that allow these units to inter-operate in gravitational balance that enables us to see stable, gradually evolving patterns rather than huge randomness coupled with a destroyed body of matter comprising fragments that somehow magically shape themselves into perfect or near perfect spheres in a vacuum with no erosive or other formative external agency to provide the smoothing and rounding.
Massive man-made structures that are thousands of years old suggest that humans were more advanced thousands of years ago. The pyramids, Matchu Pitchu, the temple at Baalbeck, etc. Large structures, many of which we would be hard pressed to engineer today yet created thousands of years ago by human beings who were apparently evolving from apes. Search on the Internet for examples.
If human beings on earth in 2007 are the most highly evolved form of the ape, homo sapiens, then these structures are inexplicable, except through stories of men from outer space.
The story of men from outer space could be plausible but does not help at all because all that this does is to transfer the debate on earth to a wider created environment and still leaves us with precisely the same dilemma as to where those beings "evolved" from leading again to the conclusion of an external creative engineering agency that created those beings from another planet.
Incidentally, i do not believe that beings from another planet did form human beings, i believe that we were created on this planet but i cannot offer you substantive evidence other than to say that i think that the question is irrelevant for the reasons mentioned above.
We need to home in on the essence of the question -- how did what we see today come into existence of its own creative volition with the structure, order, complexity, inter-operability, etc that we see today without a higher creative agency?
Untrained people cannot use sophisticated technology: I don't think that a single person who has no knowledge or experience of tools, construction, etc and who comes from a "primitive" environment where they have not been exposed to any Western constructed products, if placed in an extremely large workshop with a comprehensive selection of hand tools and diverse construction materials would product anything useful.
One only needs to pass a wood saw once over stone or metal to blunt it. This being so, i don't understand how a molecule surrounded by other molecules can decide to join itself to another molecule in any way that has any hope of resulting in something that could eventually result in a one cell living organism, let alone proceed to self construct a human being by randomly picking other molecules and cells to join to itself.