"There is Something Else involved. I do not know what."

Fred Reed tackles evolution, creation, and the mysteries of the universe. In one blog post! Here are some excerpts:

Living organisms are just too complicated to have come about by accident. This, it seems to me, is apparent to, though not provable by, anyone with an open mind.

Read a textbook of embryology. You start with a barely-visible zygote which, (we are told) guided by nothing but the laws of chemistry, unerringly reacts with ambient chemicals to build, over nine months, an incomprehensibly complex thing we call “a baby.” Cells migrate here, migrate there, modify themselves or are modified to form multitudinous organs, each of them phenomenally complex, all of this happening chemically and flawlessly.

Complexity upon complexity. In virtually invisible cells you find endoplasmic reticula, Golgi apparatus, ribosomes, nuclear and messenger and transfer RNA, lysosomes, countless enzymes, complex mechanisms for transcribing and translating DNA, itself a complex and still-mysterious repository of information.

The foregoing is only the beginning of complexity. The many organs formed effortlessly in utero are as bafflingly elaborate as cells themselves. Consider (a simplified description of) the parts of the eye: The globe of three layers, sclera, choroid, and retina. Cornea of six layers, epithelium, Bowman´s membrane, substantia propria, Dua's layer, Descemet´s membrane, endothelium. Retina of ten layers. Lens consisting of anterior and posterior capsule and contained proteinacious goop. The lens is held by delicate suspensory ligaments inside the ciliary body, a muscular doughnut that changes the shape of lens so as to focus. An iris of radial and circumferential fibers enervated competitively by the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems in opposition. A pump to circulate the aqueous humor. On and on and on. And equally on and on for all the other organs, which last for seventy years, repairing themselves when damaged.

I can´t prove that this didn´t come about accidentally. Neither can I believe it.

The trouble with the sciences (though not of all scientists) is exactly this, that they try to explain within the domain of physics things that are outside of its purview.

Perhaps instead of asking, “How does evolution explain a thing?” we should occasionally ask “Does evolution explain it?”

Living things are impossible, but some are more so. Consider brains. Larger brains supposedly allow more-complex behavior. In a laptop civilization, we refer to this as “processing power.” But consider hornets, cautiously. These have very complex behavior but almost no brains or other nervous tissue. Yet their unbrains control six multiply-joined legs (any robotics engineer will tell you that this is a massive problem), and allow them to fly precisely, also a very difficult problem. They know just how to chew wood fiber to make a paste from which they know how to construct complex nests. They know how and when to mate, which is not as simple a process. The same barely existent nervous system operates various senses and interprets the resulting data, which also isn´t easy. They find food, inform the others of its location, and navigate effortlessly over long distance.

Yet hornets are pointy-headed intellectuals compared to pharaoh ants, those super-tiny picnic abominations of which several would fit on a hornet´s eye. They too have complex social organization and so on—with hardly any neurons. In general, the behavior of social insects is probably more complex than that of whales. It is inexplicable, or at least unexplained.

A butterfly´s egg hatches into a caterpillar, which has no resemblance at all to a butterfly. In physics, butterflies and caterpillars would be anti-particles. This soft, legless, wingless gelatinous tube then pupates and, through a fantastically complex series of physical rearrangements, turns into a fantastically complex butterfly (look at butterflies in detail: they are fantastically complex). Unless something we don´t understand is going on, the likelihood of this happening at all is essentially zero.

The probability of its evolving seems less. How do you get by gradual steps from arthropods that do not have four-cycle lives to those that do? I cannot come up with even the vague plausibility required by Darwinism. Did a pre-existing arthropod shed its exoskeleton, lose its jointed legs, merge head, thorax, and abdomen to become a caterpillar? What selective pressures would cause this? But if it did do this, would not the result be a free-standing species of caterpillar? How do you get by gradual steps from caterpillar to pupating into a butterfly? Pupation is phenomenally complex. You either get all of it right the first time, or you don´t get another chance.

You can believe it if you want.