Can Evolution Explain its Own Origin?

A common virus.

1. Some parts of evolution may be true, but there are large gaps within its case that render the theory inoperable. This view is often held by religious folks who will grant Darwin the slightest leniency, though they usually have not read much supplemental material concerning how the theory works and the myriad of different sources for varying levels of proof.

2. Evolution may function in small cases, but God is required for the leaps and bounds. This view ignores the incremental evidence of discovered additions and similar structural integrity on both ends of those “leaps”.

3. OK, you got me – I can’t ignore all the evidence. Major lines of evidence within multiple fields of science and reason indicate that evolutionary theory is correct. However, “God” set this process in motion. This, of course, is the most widespread reaction to evolutionary theory from critics.

Critics invoke God as an ideological explanation when they reach a dead-end that cannot (yet) be explained by science. Evolution makes sense for explaining how complex beings like humans may exist on a planet like ours, but critics claim that evolution can not explain its own process. Meaning that if species compete for resources and against natural forces to survive in a hostile environment that favors “fitness” in various forms to promote adaptation…what created the initial conditions for this kind of setup?

The answer, they usually say, is that God did it. But is this necessary? Does it actually explain anything?

No. It doesn’t explain anything. When you trace back the steps of evolution backward toward the beginning of time, you’ll eventually need to invoke some kind of “terminator” that starts the sequence off. Using God as a terminator simply shifts the need for causation one step further backward. In the words of Dan Dennett – if God created evolution, who created God? SuperGod? And who created him – SuperDuperGod?

You will notice that evolutionary theory suffers from the same caveat. However remaining within the realm of evidence and reason does not promote giving up on the search for a viable terminator; rather, the tendency within science to continually falsify each newly proposed terminator guarantees that we’ll get as close to the actual truth as possible. So invoking God solves nothing and serves only to detriment our progression toward truth – but if not “him”, who? Or…what?

Well, let’s apply evolutionary theory to the period normally thought to precede evolution itself. If you trace evolution back to the level of the miniscule, you will see complex molecules joining together to form the constituents necessary for life. So we’ll move back even farther – how did these complex molecules even form? This hindrance is one of the largest shortcomings of evolutionary theory. It’s genuinely difficult to fathom just how complex even the earliest of large molecules and macroproteins actually were (and still are). They had to be self-copying machines, or at least until the advent of sexual reproduction. Enzymes needed to have the ability to proof-read bits of genetic code to ensure their accuracy in producing the necessary proteins and nutrients to help keep cells alive. The quandary is such that living things only existed for a finite period of time, but since all living things are quite complex, the logic becomes self-defeating.

The best solution proposed to date is the theory that genetic scaffolding needed to arise where different aspects of the overall functionality came together to create the unified whole. That smaller parts, in and of themselves not as complex, joined together somehow to create the first cases of cellular complexity. Even before the earliest bacteria, one would have to envision types of life being only quasi-alive, with some but not all of life’s necessary components. We find these types of cellular-machines in viruses, and quasi-viruses that may have joined together within the initial stages of life’s evolution.

Of course, this creates another new caveat: how could small parts of cellular machinery join together? How could these separate blocks of functionality congregate into something as fancy and complicated as a self-replicating organism? Evolutionary theorists have recently proposed that these blocks, on the move via natural forces, may have chanced upon materials natural to the Earth with a property which helped them stick together. Imagine bits of clay clinging to a riverbed while the aforementioned blocks are proceeding by. The chances of them sticking together with simplistic replicating clay crystals is somewhat unlikely, but just like our existence on this planet – it’s unlikely but it only had to happen once. [Note: more information on this aspect of evolutionary theory, specifically involving the possible role of clay crystals as cellular scaffolding can be found here.

Within this environment, the earliest of quasi-virus life-forms could have congregated and eventually built up the molecular repertoire necessary for simpler self-replication. For more information and a much more succinct explanation of how this could have happened, please see Steps towards Life: A Perspective on Evolution.

All of this is more theory, but the fact remains – it is an attempt at discovering the truth. More research is being conducted into these areas even now, plumbing the depths of our molecular history to discover just how complex organisms came about from those more simple. So can evolution explain its own origin? Undoubtedly yes, but exactly how is a matter of debate, with just one possibility outlined above.