Evolution Professor: We Evolved to be More Complex

Serendipity and Aristotelianism

We recently saw how evolutionists are elaborating on what they view as an evolutionary arms race within our genome. Rival elements battle it out as transposable elements invade and repressors seek to shut them down. The transposable elements are �continually evolving to escape repression,� while the repressors adjust and find new ways to defeat the transposable elements. It is �a never-ending race� according to one evolutionist. The backstory here is the on-going historical feud between those who view nature as perfect and those who view nature as evil. In the eighteenth century, for instance, the English natural theologians presented a decidedly optimistic, rosy version of the world, to which Hume responded that �A perpetual war is kindled amongst all living creatures,� and that nature is so arranged so as �to embitter the life of every living being.� So who is right? The answer, of course, is that both are right. Nature is both wonderful and dangerous at the same time. As usual the heresy is not in recognizing these obvious truths, but in emphasizing and dwelling on one side of the spectrum, to the exclusion of the other. Creation and Scripture�general revelation and special revelation�are studies in contrast. Science requires recognizing both sides of the contrast, and keeping them both in view together. Show me a cult, either religious or scientific, and I�ll show you people who are fixated on one end of a spectrum. The result is a lopsided theory that makes no sense.

Consider the genomic arms race idea, for example. First, it requires rapid evolution of astonishing complexity. Not likely. Second, it calls upon a monumental amount of serendipity. Humans and frogs have �basically the same 20,000 protein-coding genes as a frog, yet our genome is much more complicated, with more layers of gene regulation.� How did that happen? Those astonishing levels of sophistication and subtlety in the human genome arose with the help of these invading transposable elements. The incredible regulation machanisms that arose to repress them, just happened to take on other roles as well. This resulted in primates and ultimately humans. Really? Evolution just happened to produce transposable elements, and they then became evolutionary mechanisms? In other words, evolution created evolution. As the report summarizes, �repressor genes that originally evolved to shut down jumping genes have since come to play other regulatory roles in the genome.� That was lucky.

Furthermore, to understand and communicate this story, evolutionists dive deep into the waters of Aristotelianism. It is the ultimate internal contradiction, for the theory that is supposed to represent the triumph over teleology is, itself, immersed in it. Consider these examples:

a transposable element changed to become expressed and replicated itself throughout the genome

The way this type of repressor works, part of it binds to a specific DNA sequence and part of it binds other proteins to recruit a whole complex of proteins that creates a repressive landscape in the genome. This affects other nearby genes, so now you have a potential new layer of regulation available for further evolution.

the transposable elements are themselves continually evolving to escape repression

This paper shows how important it is to integrate computational and experimental approaches to fundamental scientific problems, such as how and why we continuously evolve to be more complex.

For each wave, the host eventually finds a way to repress retrotransposon transcription and prevent further insertions.

KZNF genes rapidly evolved to repress these two distinct retrotransposon families

evolved earlier to repress the primate L1 lineage

followed by mutations in these retrotransposons to evade repression

Evolving to escape repression? Changed to become? We evolved to be more complex? This is not science, this is story telling. We need to stay with the evidence.