Friday, January 2, 2009

A Mouse Trap That Doesn't Work..


I only recently noticed a comment by "The Wise One" under "My Friend The Atheist" in which he basically proclaims that he is an atheist himself and mentions a few issues which he thought were proofs that Islam is a lie and also mentions "Intelligent Design" and how our human bodies are not well designed.

I wish to respond. O' Mr. Wise One:

You mentioned how our blood vessels are all chaotic and tangled up. You prefer them all proper and straight and parallel for example? you don't like that there's way too many in there? more than what's efficiently needed? And what about redundancy and failure tolerance? You see chaos but when you get cut and start bleeding, you don't think how all a doctor really has to do is put the parts close together and wait for these veins to find their way to each other and mesh? How come you don't marvel at that? How do cells understand what they need to do as group? how is it that when the healing is sufficiently complete, that the cells actually STOP?? because you know that extra unwanted rampantly growing tissue is nothing but cancer. How is it that we don't get cancer after every cut?

Intelligent Design proponents usually bring the example of a simple Mouse Trap. I recommend this book I read a few years ago "Darwin's Black Box". We all know that the basis of the theory of evolution is "Survival of the Fittest". That random mutations occur throughout generations and which ever mutation is more "fit" (stronger, faster, smarter, more gorgeous) , is more likely to reproduce and survive, while the "unfit" (weaker, slower, dumber, uglier) is less likely to have offspring, and eventually die out of the population.

The problem is that some of our biological systems are so complicated and advanced in order to give the slightest bit of benefit, that slow and gradual mutation can NOT produce middle steps that are "partially beneficial" to the animal.

The book explains in heavy detail the process of blood coagulation, or clotting. If you get cut and your blood doesn't clot quickly, you'll bleed until you die. No one has yet been able to show how the modern clotting process could have had a simpler ancestral chain which would have worked, say with 50% or even 20% effectiveness.

To illustrate the idea more, the book uses the example of a mousetrap, which is many many times simpler than the chain of chemical reactions which clotting needs. To make a mouse trap to work and catch mice, you need about 4-5 parts to make it work. A base, a spring, a hammer, a holding bar and ofcourse the cheese. Those parts need to be aligned so carefully together in order to be ready to trap anything, (I remember that from my childhood qubbi trapping days). Now if any of the parts is missing, or not positioned correctly, the whole trap's effectiveness would not be reduced by a certain amount, the whole trap would STOP working. There's no "previous ancestor mutation" to it. Any previous random mutation to the mousetrap would have been a complete failure at catching mice.

And since we know that these mutations take 10's of thousands of generations to occur, I ask why would any organism that includes a bunch of parts of a system that does not really benefit the animal in any way, keep the system? wouldn't evolution theory dictate that a useless mousetrap be removed? to save the energy and cells required to make it atleast. The animal itself can not predict that the system of parts is useless now, but is HOPING to evolve it into a useful mousetrap 100's of yearsin the future, and thousands of generations later.

I agree that evolutionary mutation is correct when each step produces a benefit. But when each individual step does not produce a benefit, then why would the animal continue in that path? the more logical way for it is to mutate backwards and remove the part in later generations no?

Here's a link that the author of the book Behe talks about an evolutionary experiment where a kind of bacteria evolves to be able to benefit from cirtus Multiple Mutations Needed for E.Coli:

if only one mutation is needed to confer some ability, then Darwinian evolution has little problem finding it. But if more than one is needed, the probability of getting all the right ones grows exponentially worse. “If two mutations have to occur before there is a net beneficial effect — if an intermediate state is harmful, or less fit than the starting state — then there is already a big evolutionary problem.” (4) And what if more than two are needed? The task quickly gets out of reach of random mutation.

13 comments:

sadia said...

subhanallah.

let me first tell you i don't know much about science.

i remember watching harun yahya's documentary in which he refuted darwinism.

darwin himself, did not have the answers for a lot of things and kept quiet about them. for example, he couldn't explain the beauty of the peacocks' feathers.

if evolution was left on it's own, i don't think animals, humans, plants, etc would've been as beautiful and perfect as they are. sure they'd evolve according to the environment and what's required to survive, etc...but with such perfection? this can only be the work of ALLAH (SWT).


looking at nature only consolidates my belief in ALLAH. for example, who taught the birds to build such beautiful, intricately woven nests? why do ants live in colonies?...why are they so well organized? how the joey (baby kangaroo) always knows how to travel into it's mother's pouch...why don't some of them go astray? etc. i don't know about anyone else, but such things are just more evidence for me for the existence of ALLAH.

Anonymous said...

Translation to all this nonsense: "I don't understand how evolution works, therefore my magic god fairy did it."

Please click my name and educate yourselves.

Dee said...

very well said mashallah
" how is it that when the healing is sufficiently complete, that the cells actually STOP?? because you know that extra unwanted rampantly growing tissue is nothing but cancer. "
i was reall marveled at this thought , i knew it all along but never thought of it before!

and please jst ignore them , i feel that negiotating with them is (mdkhal mn mdakhel elshai6an)

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