Has Paley's Watchmaker argument been debunked?

The Watchmaker argument, refuted by evolution?

This video is a powerful tool to demonstrate why micro does not lead to macroevolution, why Darwins Theory of evolution does not withstand scrutiny and the enormous biological
challenge that would have had to be overcome to go from unicellular to multicellular life.  

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MdjjqBI_EzI


Has Paley's Watchmaker argument been debunked? 
https://reasonandscience.catsboard.com/t2860-has-paley-s-watchmaker-argument-been-debunked

Some requirements for transition to multicellularity:  10.00
1, Cell differentiation: 13.32
2. Morphogenesis 18.15
3. Defining each Cell's specific function 25.40
4. Cell migration 27.07
5. Connecting adjacent cells 31.53
6. Cell-Cell communication 33.24
7. Adaptation & microevolution 43.35
8. The genetic program limiting body growth 47.12
9. Gene regulatory network 50.28
10. Setting up sexual reproduction 58.34
Endnotes: 1.02.54



William Paley was an English Christian apologist, and philosopher. He is best known for his natural theology exposition of the teleological argument for the existence of God  which made use of the watchmaker analogy. 
He believed that the complexity and perfection of nature were powerful arguments for the existence and attributes of God. 


Paley famously made an argument by analogy of organisms as watches and of God as a watchmaker, according to which  complex structures, like a watch, could not  emerge accidentally but require the existence of a rational designer, in this case a watchmaker


Paleys watchmaker analogy is a classic: Paley writes: In crossing a heath, suppose I pitched my foot against a stone, and were asked how the stone came to be there, I might possibly answer, that, for any thing I knew to the contrary, it had lain there for ever: nor would it perhaps be very easy to shew the absurdity of this answer. 


But suppose I had found a watch* upon the ground, and it should be enquired how the watch happened to be in that place, I should hardly think of the answer which I had before given, that, for any thing I knew, the watch might have always been there. 


Yet why should not this answer serve for the watch, as well as for the stone? Why is it not as admissible in the second case, as in the first? For this reason, and for no other, that, when we come to inspect the watch, we perceive (what we could not discover in the stone) that its several parts are framed and put together for a purpose, 

that they are so formed and adjusted as to produce motion, and that motion so regulated as to point out the hour of the day; that, if the several parts had been differently shaped from what they are, of a different size from what they are, or placed after any other manner, or in any other order, than that in which they are placed, either no motion at all would have been carried on in the machine, or none which would have answered the use, that is now served by it. 


Without knowing about biology as we do today, Paley made observations, which are spot on, and have astounding significance and correctness, applied to the reality of molecular biochemistry. Let's list the points he mentioned again. If the parts are differently shaped, differently sized, placed after any other manner, or in any other order no motion would be the result.


the individual parts of the watch must be designed in order to be shaped and sized correctly, so they require an intelligent designer.



Each part must be complementary in order to be able to be placed at the right place and the assembly also requires the right sequence. The same is the case in a multicellular organism. This principle is called structural complementarity and is the very essence of biomolecular recognition.


In the same sense as in a watch, one part like an apoprotein without its substrate or prosthetic group must precisely fit and be able to interact with other parts. In biology, structural complementarity is the significant clue to understand the functional properties of biological systems. 

Biological systems, from the macromolecular level to the cellular level, operate via specific molecular recognition mechanisms based on structural complementarity: A sperm, for example, recognizes an egg. All these interactions involve structural complementarity between molecules.


So according to the modern evolutionary claims, the watchmaker argument has been refuted by the theory of evolution. 


Richard Dawkins borrowed the name from Paley for the title of his 1986 book The Blind Watchmaker, which attacked the idea that complex life needed a religious explanation. And still, today, when the watchmaker analogy is invoked, the immediate answer is: The analogy has been refuted through evolution by natural selection.

But has it? The emergence of multicellularity was ostensibly a major evolutionary leap. Indeed, most biologists consider it one of the most significant transitions in the evolutionary history of Earth’s inhabitants.

We will address this question by giving at what hurdles unicellular organisms would have had to overcome in order to evolve into multicellular organisms.



How do changes in development create new body architectures? Are heritable changes enough, given the constraints imposed by the necessity of the organism to survive as it develops? These questions are critical in molecular
biology, physiology, cell biology, genetics, anatomy, cancer research, neurobiology, immunology, ecology, and evolutionary biology.

The study of development has become essential for understanding all other areas of biology. In turn, the many advances of molecular biology have finally given elucidating answers. Have they been predicted correctly and in a satisfactory manner by Darwin's theory of evolution? The advance of science has it made possible to solve the riddle. 

The black box has been opened. Has the evidence led to confirm evolutionary predictions, or have they have been falsified?  Evolution would have had to go in a gradual slow, increasing manner from one eukaryotic cell to an organism with two cells, and so on,  to get in the end an organism with millions, billions, or even trillions of precisely differentiated cells like the human body with 37 trillion cells.   


Let's suppose there were unicellular organisms, eukaryotic so-called protozoans, and evolutionary pressure to go from one to two cells. What and how many mutations would be required in the genome and have to be selected and fixed? Mutations would have to provide the selection of a considerable number of new internal cell functions and created NEW information for these to emerge.


There would have to be set up a way to divide the tasks and assignments of cooperation to consume energy, survive, and reproduce.  But how could just this apparently tiny, but in reality huge step in the molecular world have occurred? And why should it have? How did cells supposedly make the transition from life as single cells to split tasks, set up the information to start existing as bicellular organisms, 


and associate and cooperate as teams such that they work as a single, cohesive unit? The change would englobe the modification of shape, divide functions and assign to each cell special tasks, structure, and entirely new features of development, ways to connect and stay connected to each other, communicate, and cooperate in order to start doing things in a combined manner.


And all this transition would have to be advantageous during each transitional step, resulting in an organism having an architecture where specialization of each cell in their functions would provide an advantage of survival. If they would duplicate and stick together, without specializing, they would just remain a group of cells or a colony.


Evolutionary literature claims that such transition supposedly occurred 25 times independently, which is called convergent evolution since cell-to-cell adhesion or communication is achieved in various ways in plants, animals, fungi, and algae.  

1. Set up cell type and phenotype of the new cells
2. Set up morphology, size and shape of each new cell, and how its new agglomeration leads to new functional structures like tissues and organs organized in a non-random, functional manner. 
3. Defining each cell's specific function after differentiation
4. Cell migration, set up and define the position and place in the body of each cell type.   
5. Set up specific cell adhesion mechanisms for each cell type 
6. Set up Cell-Cell communication channels and signalling networks
7. Set up mechanisms for adaptation and homeostasis specifically for the new emerging multicellular organism
8. The genetic program limiting body growth and cell cycle counter
9. Set up of the gene regulatory network orchestrating gene expression
10. Setting up sexual reproduction


As evidence reveals, a considerable number of innovations would have to be implemented, as listed above. The technical demands of multicellularity are extraordinary. Cells that commit to living together need a whole new set of tools. They have to come up with ways of sticking together, communicating, and sharing oxygen and food.

They also need a master developmental program, a way to direct specific cells to take on specialized jobs in different parts of the body. And a self-destruction program is necessary. The process is called apoptosis.  The genes participating in adhesion in animals might have been extant in the unicellular ancestor of animals. 

Most of the domains typically found in animals are present for example in choanoflagellates. However, the function of such a diverse set of adhesion molecules in a unicellular organism is not yet known. There are more demands and requirements which will not be elucidated in this video. 


Why did cells not remain single-celled? In Astrobiology magazine, the answer to this question is usually cooperation, as cells benefitted more from working together than they would from living alone. Hummm. Really ??!! An article in Science magazine in June 2018 admitted that the transition to multicellular life as momentous as any in the history of life, until recently we had no idea how it happened.

 The gulf between unicellular and multicellular life seems almost unbridgeable, so they confessed. If so, does the explanation above not seem, let's say, a little bit simplistic and naive? or, worse, even pseudo-scientific?


In the paper: The Origins of Multicellularity, the author writes:  My line of reasoning is that the first step in the evolution of multicellularity was a size increase due to an accident, in other words, a mutation that prevents the daughter cells from separating. If the larger cell mass has any advantages, such as ensuring the safety of the germline by producing a protected internal environment, then natural selection will see to it that the novelty is retained.

Cells require ultrasophisticated proteins that keep them together. Arguing that an accident did hold them somehow together seems nothing more than just so guesswork. We will give now a closer look at the mentioned innovations. 



Cell differentiation. That is already a huge venture. Stem cells can generate transit cells and, finally, differentiated cells. In most cases, stem cells can produce more than one type of differentiated progeny (multi- or totipotent). So the transition from a Cell containing just the information to make one cell, to a cell with two or more differentiated Cells would have to occur, sharing tasks. 



Now let us suppose early earth was populated by unicellular life forms, like protozoans. Then the transformation to multicellular organisms began to evolve. Pluripotent cells would have had to become able to produce specialized cells, where each one of them would have had function only together with all other cells, like ten different types of cells forming blood. 

This differentiation had to be organized and coordinated in advance on a systems level above the individual cell level. Foresight is required to know the end function of blood in a joint venture of all required individual blood cell types. 




Blood is only functional if it carries all ten different cell types, which have each different, vital functions for life.  Platelets, for example, are essential components of blood whose function is to stop bleeding by clumping and clotting blood vessel injuries.  


T cells are essential for human immunity. They orchestrate an immune response and play important roles in all arms of immunity. 


Red blood cells are the most common type of blood cells and essential for the vertebrate organism's delivering oxygen to the body tissues—via blood flow through the circulatory system.


At least six of the different cell types in the blood are life essential. If one is missing, life using cardiovascular systems is not possible. Had these blood types not to emerge together, to make the life of a multicellular organism like vertebrates possible?

Moreover, Vascular cells have also been shown to be part of the niche that controls the maintenance and differentiation of hematopoietic stem cells which form all blood cells and reside in the bone marrow. This forms an entire interdependent system where bones had to be existent, providing bone marrow, the place where blood and vascular formation takes place. 


Most blood types require intermediate steps in their development until becoming final cell types used in blood. These intermediate cell types have no function in the organism. Why would evolution produce them or natural selection select them? We are talking about an enormous number of mutations required to produce each of the ten different blood cells.

Many cells play many roles during development, going through stages that are no longer seen in adulthood. How can natural selection account for the emergence of these cells? The role of some cell types is to activate specific genes in nearby cells, and once they accomplish their task, they die. This is clear evidence of an orchestrated, pre-programmed process. 



I think Byron Bledsoe brings it pretty well to the point in this quote. Irreducible complexity is powerful evidence of creation, and the vascular system composed of veins and blood cells, and bone marrow where hematopoietic stem cells are produced, is an interdependent system, and so a very illustrative example. But how does science explain the origin of the blood vascular system? 


It is evident that the authors in the rather recent paper cited above from 2013, Evolutionary origins of the blood vascular system and endothelium, evolution is assumed, but the authors have nothing to offer besides declarations of vague guesses and assertions based on evolutionary beliefism. 



Morphogenesis

Morphogenesis depends on a serious of factors, amongst it defining the size and shape of each cell, which has to organize into functional structures.  Differentiated cells are not randomly distributed. Rather, they are organized into intricate tissues and organs. During development, cells divide, migrate, and die; tissues fold and separate. 


Genetic and epigenetic information has to be set up to define morphology, function, size and shape of each new cell, and how its new agglomeration leads to new functional structures like tissues and organs organized in a non-random, functional manner. 






Cells come in all sorts of forms and sizes, and that is defined based on the functions they will exercise.  



In an article in the magazine wired, HOW LIFE MADE THE LEAP FROM SINGLE CELLS TO MULTICELLULAR ANIMALS, the authors write: After the appearance of microbes, life got more complicated. Cells organized themselves into new three-dimensional structures. They began to divide up the labour of life so that some tissues were in charge of moving around, while others managed eating and digesting. 

They developed new ways for cells to communicate and share resources. These complex multicellular creatures were the first animals, and they were a major success. Soon afterwards, roughly 540 million years ago, animal life erupted, diversifying into a kaleidoscope of forms in what’s known as the Cambrian explosion.




The longest-necked animals of all time were the extinct sauropod dinosaurs, some of which had necks 14 meters long. In these animals, the neurons that comprised the recurrent laryngeal nerve were at least 28 meters long. In the longest sauropods, these neurons may have been 40–50 meters long, probably the longest cells in the history of life.

They were sensory neurons that connected receptors in the skin of the extremities with interneurons in the brainstem, a pattern of neural architecture that is present in all extant vertebrates.


The biggest single-celled organism can be up to 20cm across – Syringammina fragilissima’s one cell branches out into a network of tubes extending over ten centimetres ( or 3.9 inches). As it grows, the deep sea-dwelling creature oozes slime onto the sediment, solidifying its structure.


The size and form of a hospital are totally different than of a residential house. What defines its structure, is the scaffold structure, which has to be defined precisely taking the specific demands in consideration. 


Shape and form of cells have to be defined in accordance with the function that each cell type will perform. A neuron requires a totally different form and shape than a red blood cell. 


In cells,  actin, actomyosin and microtubules that form the cytoskeleton exercise the same function as the scaffold structure of a house or a large building, defining shape and form. 
For cells to function properly, they must organize themselves and interact mechanically with each other and with their environment. They have to be correctly shaped, physically robust, and properly structured internally. 



Many have to change their shape and move from place to place. All cells have to be able to rearrange their internal components as they grow, divide, and adapt to changing circumstances. These spatial and mechanical functions depend on this remarkable system of filaments. 

The cytoskeleton’s varied functions depend on the behaviour of three families of protein filaments—actin filaments, microtubules, and intermediate filaments. Microtubules are very important in a number of cellular processes. They are involved in maintaining the structure of the cell and provide a platform for intracellular macromolecular assemblies through dynein and kinesin motors.




They are also involved in chromosome separation (mitosis and meiosis) and are the major constituents of mitotic spindles, which are used to pull apart eukaryotic chromosomes. The dynamic cytoskeletal and membrane system that governs morphological patterning in cells is fundamental. 


This system enables eukaryotes to package signalling molecules in endosomes, tiny vacuoles that bud from surface membranes, and transport them through the cell by means of molecular motors at rates much faster than would be possible by diffusion alone 

As a result, eukaryotic cells can change shape or physiology in response to molecular signals, permitting processes such as locomotion of amoebas, and permanent cell differentiation. The dynamic cytoskeleton and membrane system of eukaryotic cells open up possibilities of size, structure, function, and development not available to prokaryotic organisms.






Mitotic cell division is the most fundamental task of all living cells. Cells have the intricate and tightly regulated machinery to ensure that mitosis occurs with appropriate frequency and high fidelity. If someone wants to explain the origin of eukaryotic cells, the arise of mitosis and its mechanism and involved cell organelles and proteins must be elucidated.


 The centrosome plays a crucial role: it functions as the major microtubule-organizing center and plays a vital role in guiding chromosome segregation during mitosis. These architecturally perfect structures are essential in many animal cells and plants. 


Defining each Cell's specific function  Genes define the amino acid sequence that makes proteins, and specific sets of proteins define tissue-type. There are no proteins for hemoglobin in neuronal cells and there aren't proteins that make voltage-gated ion channels in red blood cells. 

These functional elements of the cells, along with other cell-specific proteins, are responsible for making a neuron a neuron and a red blood cell  a red blood cell. Yet, both cell-types have the genes for each of these cell-specific proteins, in fact every eukaryotic cell with a nucleus in a multicellular organism contains a full set of all tissue-specific genes as part of the full genome. 

Tissue-specificity must then arise from how genes are differentially expressed, meaning that in some cell lineages certain sets of genes are silenced, while in others they are expressed – leading one line of progenitor stemcells to differentiate into neurons and another to differentiate into erythrocytes, or any of the other approximately 200 different cell types of the human body.



Another issue that has to be explained is individual, and a more advanced stage, collective cell migration which has a key role during morphogenesis and during wound healing and tissue renewal in the adult. It is a central process in the development and maintenance of multicellular organisms.  

In addition to displaying a coordinated migratory behaviour, collectively migrating cells move more efficiently than if they migrated separately, which indicates that a cellular interplay occurs during collective cell migration. 



In recent years, evidence has accumulated confirming the importance of such intercellular communication and the molecular mechanisms involved. The addition of cells in an evolutionary trajectory from unicellular to multicellularity requires the production of precise new information of where the new cells have to be located in the evolving organism. 

Processes such as tissue formation during embryonic development wound healing, and immune responses, all require the orchestrated movement of cells in particular directions to specific locations. Errors during this process have serious consequences, including intellectual disability, vascular disease, tumour formation and metastasis.

Eukaryotic cell migration typically is far more complex and can consist of combinations of different migration mechanisms. It generally involves drastic changes in cell shape which are driven by the cytoskeleton, for instance, a series of contractions and expansions due to cytoplasmic displacement. 



When the tasks of labour are shared and/or divided in a multicellular organism, then the specific function to each cell must be purposefully defined, organized and assigned, in order to permit to build tissues, organs, organ systems, to organisms.

Epigenetics is a reference to a whole host of mechanisms that affect cellular function, tissue-specificity, and morphogenesis above and beyond the genetic code specified in the linear sequence of DNA nucleotides. 


Each Cells needs to be in the right position and place in the body. This is crucial. Limbs like legs, fins, eyes etc. must all be placed at the right place. 

It is awe inspiring to imagine, that the instructional information stored in one single fertilized egg can give rise to a human adult body, developing into an organism made of 37 trillion cells, perfectly organized, each cell at the right place, emerging amongst 200 different ones, organizing into tissues, organs etc.

Fingers are always at the tips of our hands, never in the middle; our eyes are always in our heads, not in our toes or gut. This creation of ordered form involves precisely coordinated cell growth, cell migration, and cell death.

To believe that such a complex organisation would and could rise from unguided evolutionary accidental gene duplications where the function of each cells differenciation makes only sense in the completion of an entire tissue or organ or organism is irrational to the extreme. Even a trillion trillion years would not be enough time to sort out the right development stages amongst all wrong ones This cnclusion is not an argument from incredulity.

It is that evolutionary narratives stretch far beyond what is reasonable to be believed. I have not enough faith to believe that we are the product of mere natural forces. Intelligent design by an unimaginably powerful intelligent creator is the only rational inference.


Cell‐to‐cell adhesion is an essential feature of multicellularity.


Of all the social interactions between cells in a multicellular organism, the most fundamental are those that hold the cells together. The apparatus of cell junctions and the extracellular matrix is critical for every aspect of the organization, function, and dynamics of multicellular structures.

During animal development, cells are typically free to migrate and slide past one another in ways that permit differential adhesion, cortical tension, and other processes that can facilitate the sorting and assembly of some tissues.


The cells have not only to hold together, but important mechanisms to stick the cells together is required, that is, the ability of individual cells to associate in precise patterns to form tissues, organs, and organ systems requires that individual cells be able to recognize, adhere to, and communicate with each other.

That is by no means a simple task. Even in a nematode worm, as many as 2000 genes encode for cell adhesion and cell signalling.


The other crucial innovation that had to occur and emerge, is cell-cell signalling & communication. Even if bacterias and colonies do communicate with each other, that is by no means comparable with the complexity of communication systems of multicellular organisms. 




Higher organisms have to coordinate a large number of physiological activities Cell–cell interactions through signal-transduction pathways are crucial in the coordination of embryonic development. 




Signal transduction within the target cell must be coordinated, fine-tuned and channelled within a network of intracellular signalling paths that finally trigger distinct biochemical reactions and thus determine the specific functions of a cell. 

Importantly, both intercellular and intracellular signalling are subjected to a regulatory mechanism that allows the coordination of cellular functions in a developmental and tissue-specific manner.


Such a transition requires more than a mere augmentation of an existing system for co-ordinated multicellularity to evolve; it requires the ex nihilo creation of an entirely new system of organization to coordinate cells appropriately to form a multicellular individual. Organisms have a variety of different mechanisms to achieve cell-to cell communication. The mode of communication depends, in part, on the distance between the cells that need to communicate with each other.



One way to categorize cell signalling is by the manner in which the signal is transmitted from one cell to another. Despite the bewildering number of cell types and patterns found in the animal kingdom, only a few signalling pathways are required to generate them.  

One clear conclusion to be drawn from all these studies is that there is a rather limited number of signalling pathways to generate the remarkable variety and complexity of form and function that we see today, both across phyla and within the individuals of a given species. 



Signals are relayed between cells in different ways, all of which involve a cell that produces a signal and a target cell that receives the signal.  Complex multicellular organisms, however, have an additional path for cell-cell communication in the form of microscopic passageways across cell walls and membranes. These passageways facilitate electrical, metabolic, and signal communication between cells and do so in spatially specific, or targeted, ways. 



Since all signal transduction pathways are essential for multicellular development: is it feasible to suppose that they were all co-opted or borrowed from unicellular organisms? If so, they still need the information to direct new body plan development. Where did this information come from?


The rules of any communication system are always defined in advance by a process of deliberate choices. There must be a prearranged agreement between sender and receiver, otherwise, communication is impossible. By definition, a communication system cannot evolve from something simpler because evolution itself requires communication to exist first. 

You can’t make copies of a message without the message, and you can’t create a message without first having a language. And before that, you need intent. A code is an abstract, immaterial, nonphysical set of rules. There is no physical law that says ink on a piece of paper formed in the shape T-R-E-E should correspond to that large leafy organism in your front yard. You cannot derive the local rules of a code from the laws of physics, because hard physical laws necessarily exclude choice. 


On the other hand, the coder decides whether “1” means “on” or “off.” She decides whether “0” means “off” or “on.” Codes, by definition, are freely chosen. The rules of the code come before all else. These rules of any language are chosen with a goal in mind: communication, which is always driven by intent. That being said, conscious beings can evolve a simple code into a more complex code—if they can communicate in the first place. 


But even simple grunts and hand motions between two humans who share no language still require communication to occur. Pointing to a table and making a sound that means “table” still requires someone to recognize what your pointing finger means.

Most signal-relay stations we know about were intelligently designed. Signal without recognition is meaningless.  Communication implies a signalling convention (a “coming together” or agreement in advance) that a given signal means or represents something: e.g., that S-O-S means “Send Help!”   The transmitter and receiver can be made of non-sentient materials, but the functional purpose of the system always comes from a mind. 

The mind uses the material substances to perform an algorithm that is not itself a product of the materials or the blind forces acting on them.  Signal sequences may be composed of mindless matter, but they are marks of a mind behind the intelligent design.


Cellular interactions with the extracellular matrix and with neighbouring cells profoundly influence a variety of signalling events including those involved in mitogenesis, survival, and differentiation.  Integrins, cadherins, selectins, and other cell adhesion molecules regulate signal transduction cascades. These mechanisms often involve the ability of cell adhesion molecules to initiate the formation of organized structures or scaffolds that permit the efficient flow of information in signalling pathways.

Animal cells use specialized adhesion receptors to attach to one another. Many of these adhesion proteins are transmembrane proteins, which means the extracellular portion of these proteins can interact with the extracellular portion of similar proteins on the surface of a neighbouring cell. Although diagrams of adhesive structures may suggest that they are static once assembled, they are anything but. Cell-cell adhesion receptors fall into a relatively small number of classes. They include 

1.immunoglobulin superfamily (IgSF) proteins, 
2.cadherins, 
3.selectins, and, in a few cases, 
4.integrins


Cells can dynamically assemble and disassemble adhesions in response to a variety of events.  This seems to be an essential requirement for function right from the beginning of multicellularity.  Many adhesion proteins are continuously recycled:  The molecular machines to exercise these functions, therefore, had to emerge together with adhesion proteins.

The setup and implementation of sophisticated, complex and advanced communication networks like the internet depend on the invention of highly intelligent, skilled communication network engineers.


Most impressing, multicellular organisms use several extremely advanced communication systems, like Tunneling nanotubes (TNT's),  Extracellular Vesicles ( VT's) which are, on top of that, also cargo carriers . The size of the communication and cargo delivery network of the human body is 75 thousand times the size of the entire internet of the whole world, if there would be just one communication connection between each cell ( in reality, things are far more complex: each neuron cell computer is connected  up to 10,000 other neurons )


Cell-to-cell communication is a critical requirement to coordinate behaviours of the cells in a community and thereby achieve tissue homeostasis and conservation of the multicellular organisms. Tunnelling nanotubes (TNTs), as a cell-to-cell communication over long distance, allow for bi- or uni-directional transfer of cellular components between cells. 


Health and performance are completely dependent upon how efficient that signalling and communication process works. Evidence suggests that these highly sophisticated communication channels had to be fully functional right from the beginning. 


Microevolution is better described as adaptation and is an engineered process, which does not happen by accident. The Cell receives macroscopic signals from the environment and responds by adaptive, nonrandom mutations. The capacity of Mammals and other multicellular organisms to adapt to changing environmental conditions is extraordinary.


In order to effectively produce and secrete mature proteins, cellular mechanisms for monitoring the environment are essential. Exposure of cells to various environments causes accumulation of unfolded proteins and results in the activation of a well-orchestrated set of pathways during a phenomenon known as the unfolded protein response. 

Cells have powerful quality control networks that cooperate to monitor the folding states of proteins and to remove misfolded conformers through either refolding or degradation.


Cell survival requires appropriate proportions of molecular oxygen and various antioxidants. Reactive products of oxygen, called Reactive Oxygen Species ( ROS) are amongst the most potent and omnipresent threats faced by cells. Cells, damaged by ROS, irreversibly infected, functionless and/or potentially oncogenic cells are destined for persistent inactivation or elimination, respectively.



If mechanisms that do not trigger controlled and programmed Cell death ( apoptosis) are not present on day 1, the organisms cannot survive and dies. The social collaboration within a multicellular organism is so close and intricate that it even extends to the self-sacrifice of the somatic cell for the sake of the germ cell and the perpetuation of the species. 


This is very different from unicellular organisms where the principle rule is the survival of the fittest, or perhaps more accurately the survival of the “fit enough”.

Simply put, the principle is that all of a multicellular organism's cells are prepared to suicide when needed for the benefit of the organism as a whole. They eliminate themselves in a very carefully programmed way so as to minimize damage to the larger organism.  On average, in human adults, it’s about 50-70 BILLION cells that die per day. We shed 30,000 to 50,000 skin cells every minute.


An adult human is made up of something like 40 trillion cells, most of which are replaced on a timescale of months as they wear out or get damaged. So over a lifetime, a human might have to grow 20,000 trillion cells. Every one of those cells must behave according to the overall program.




In multicellular organisms, genetic programs control precisely how many times each cell reproduces. But if those cells were allowed to reproduce uncontrollably in a multicellular organism, that would destroy organismal integrity, and harm or kill the organism.

At the organismal level, selection will favour traits that preserve organismal integrity, which tries to control reproduction of cells beyond what is needed.  Organism seeks to control the reproduction to what is needed at a higher level of organisation; a single cell seeks to reproduce more than its competitors.

In a bacterial colony, if one bacterium can grow faster than the others then that bacterium’s offspring will eventually dominate the colony. That cannot be allowed to happen in a multicellular organism; if one cell gains a mutation that makes it grow faster, or where it is not meant to, the result is a cancer that will kill the organism.

If each cell in our face were to undergo just one more cell division, we would be considered horribly malformed. If each cell in our arms underwent just one more round of cell division, we could tie our shoelaces without bending over. How do our cells know when to stop dividing? Our arms are generally the same size on both sides of the body. How is cell division so tightly regulated?

Body growth in animals is rapid in early life but then progressively slows, thus imposing a limit on adult body size. This growth deceleration in mammals is caused by potent suppression of cell proliferation in multiple tissues. This progressive decline in proliferation results from a GENETIC PROGRAM that occurs in multiple organs and involves the down-regulation of a large set of growth-promoting genes.


The limit on adult body size is imposed by a negative feedback loop. Different organs appear to use different types of information to precisely target their adult size. Organ size appears to be limited by the initial number of progenitor cells, suggesting a mechanism based on cell-cycle counting. Growth disorders result in the unrestrained growth of cancer.

Furthermore, other, complex regulatory mechanisms that consist of multiple components with overlapping functions guarantee that defects in one component do not totally abolish the timing function. In some developmental systems, growth appears to be limited by a cell-division counter. How came this to be? Design and programming by intelligence, or set up by unguided evolutionary tinkering?



The morphological shape of multicellular organisms is largely defined by the gene regulatory network. Cells must activate their genes at different times and places, which means complicated control systems for the genes, called ‘genetic control circuits’. The more complex the organism, the more complex these circuits are.


The gene regulatory network is essential for the development of the single cell zygote into a full-fledged multicellular organism.

Different body plans are realized with a  set of developmental genes, namely transcription factors and signalling molecules. A network of interactions between the gene regulatory network and genes govern cell differentiation.

The instructions that control when and where a gene is expressed are written in the sequence of DNA bases located in the regulatory region of the gene. These instructions are written in a language that is often called the ‘gene regulatory code’.


These networks are known as developmental gene regulatory networks and consist largely of the functional linkage between developmental control genes, cis-regulatory modules, and differentiation genes, which generate spatially and temporally refined patterns of gene expression.

Gene regulatory networks are modular and hierarchical in architecture, as they are divided into different components. For example, the components controlling the initial stages of development are at the top of the hierarchy, while the portions governing intermediate processes, such as spatial subdivision and morphological patterns are in the middle, and the components controlling more specific functions, including cell differentiation and organogenesis/morphogenesis, are at the periphery. 

A cell is a sophisticated device that performs three elaborate functions: sensing inputs, processing the input information for decision-making, and executing the outputs. To this end, cells have built-in sensors that can receive the input signals generated by various environmental factors

Specifically, the plasma membrane and its integrated receptors can sense pressure, osmotic stress, intracellular contact, temperature, and chemicals. At the same time reactive oxygen species, pH, nutrients, signalling factors, and other indicators of internal state are registered by internal receptors. Varying degrees of a single environmental input or a combination of many of them is presented to the cell at any given time, giving rise to a large array of input information sets. 

Cells continuously process this multitude of input signals to make decisions about their appropriate responses that lead to changes in gene expression, enzymatic activity, and rewiring of their signalling networks.

1. Regulation, governing, controlling, recruiting, interpretation, recognition, orchestrating, elaborating strategies, guiding, instruct are all tasks of the gene regulatory network.
2. Such activity can only be exercised if no intelligence is present if the correct actions were pre-programmed by intelligence.
3. Therefore, most probably, the gene regulatory network was programmed by an intelligent agency.

1. Complex multicellular lifeforms depend on gene regulatory networks which are a collection of molecular regulators that interact with each other and with other substances in the cell to orchestrate the expression of DNA. 
2. Gene regulatory networks operate based on logic gates and their networks process chemical input signals similar to computers. These encoded instructions are based on boolean logic.
3. Logic depends on reason. Reason depends on intelligence. Only an intelligent mind can think rationally, and implement a system based on conceptual laws of logic. Therefore, the best and most reasonable explanation for the existence of complex gene regulatory networks based on boolean logic, essential for the making of complex multicellular organisms, is the creative action of a powerful, transcendent, intelligent Creator. 

1. The setup of functional Information retrieval systems, like a library classification system, is always tracked back to intelligence
2. The gene regulatory network is a fully automated, pre-programmed, ultra-complex gene information extraction system
3. Therefore, its origin is best explained through intelligent setup



Epigenetic information is thought to be contained in cell structures other than DNA, and to involve, for example, patterns in the cytoskeleton (the cellular scaffolding or skeleton in a cell’s cytoplasm) and in the cell membrane, but these patterns, too, are probably effects of more fundamental causes. 

Darwinism, therefore, fails to account for the origin of both the genetic and nongenetic information necessary to produce new forms of life, and cannot explain what actually determines an organism's physical shape. 

From the year 2000 onwards, a new branch of biology, a concept called systems biology, has begun to be used widely in biology in a variety of contexts.  Systems biology focuses on complex interactions in biological systems by applying a holistic perspective. 

Cells and organisms work based on data flow. Data processing can be found in nature all down to the atomic and molecular level. Examples are DNA information storage and the histone code. Moreover, cells have the potential to compute ( process data), both intracellular (e.g. transcription networks) and during cell to cell communication. 

Higher order cell systems such as the immune and the endocrine system, the homeostasis system, and the nerve system can be described as computational systems. The most powerful biological computer we know is the human brain.


The sperm and egg are highly specialized cells, and only they can transmit the instructions for making an organism from one generation to the next. How are these germ cells set apart, and what are the instructions in the nucleus and cytoplasm that allow them to form the next generation?  The complexity and different systems needed to be in place for sexual reproduction to be possible are truly awe inspiring and amazing. 

For good reasons, sex has been said to be the queen of problems for evolutionary biology to explain its origin. Either the sperm can follow the female hormones to the egg or they cannot. Either the sperm can penetrate the egg wall or it cannot. If we all share a common ancestor, at some point reproduction had to evolve into the sexual realm, and because that has clearly happened, it must offer some kind of genetic advantage.  But what is it ? Science  can only guess. 



In this video, i have given a short overview of the manifold innovations that had to occur to go from the unicellular to the multicellular realm. Of course, each of the ten points mentioned, deserves far more indepth analysis and elucidation, but what has been shown outlines a mainpoint of this video: There is nothing simple in biology. The transition to multicellularity would have required at least the ten innovations at once. But that is not how evolution works, where slow gradual mutations occur over long periods of time. 

The evidence in the fossil record demonstrates the appearance of multicellular organisms suddenly, like in the Cambrian explosion. And so does the evidence in the molecular world confirm that a huge transition to multicellularity had to emerge with a totally new order and level of functional complexity, all at once. That is simply evidence of intelligent design, and not evolution.  




Science magazine, for example, makes the claim because this transition supposedly occurred multiple times, it must have been a small hurdle. Thats a remarkable non-sequitur. What a misleading conclusion,which demonstrates how the evidence has to be twisted, in order to fit the naturalistic narrative - no design inference permitted. I would say, a nice example of the bad fruits of philosophical naturalism which permeates modern science. 


If science papers claim that selecting just a few genetic mutations explains the enormous feat of increase of organized complexity, even if millions or hundreds of millions of years were at hand, then there are good reasons to be skeptic of such claims.  Above science article is a littlebit more courageous and admits that multiple innovations would have been required in these transitions, but does not explore where this evidence leads to further, but then 
simply sticks to the baseless claim that convergent evolution just happened. 


Lewontin brought it nicely to the point, when he says:Our willingness to accept scientific claims that are against common sense is the key to an understanding of the real struggle between science and the supernatural. We take the side of science in spite of the patent absurdity of some of its constructs, in spite of its failure to fulfill many of its extravagant promises of health and life, in spite of the tolerance of the scientific community for unsubstantiated just-so stories, because we have a prior commitment, a commitment to materialism.

The blind watchmaker has no business in making watches, and so neither in biology. 

I have given a small overview. Each of the topics mentioned is a huge topic, and uncalculable science papers and books exists on these topics. Pinpointing what REALLY defines body architecture, the orchestration of organism development, cell shape and body form and the mechanisms of adaptation and secondary speciation, and exposing the correct explanation of biochemical mechanisms of biodiversity is the holy grail of biological sciences. Preprogrammed codified information and signalling replaces Darwin's theory and its various subsequent adaptations, extensions, and new proposals like the modern extended synthesis or the so-called " third way ". The true mechanism is " Biochemical systems programming and signalling", and special creation of species and/or kinds by an intelligent powerful creator. Long periods of time and gradual, evolutionary development is not possible, face the fact that cells and organisms work like gigantic interlocked machines and factory complexes, where in any case, if one tiny part is missing, nothing goes. Natural selection would not select for components of a complex system that would be useful only in the completion of that much larger system. No glycine amino acids, no pyrimidines, no DNA - no life. No Watson Crick base pair fine-tuning, no DNA - no life. No ribosomal mechanism for amino acid amide bondage, no proteins, no life. No nitrogenase enzymes to fix nitrogen in an energy demanding, triple bond breaking process, no ammonia, required to make amino acids - no nitrogen cycle - no advanced life. No chlorophylls, no absorption of light to start photosynthesis, no starch and glucose - cells will have no food supply to sustain complex organisms - no advanced life on earth. No rubisco, no fix of CO2, no hydrocarbons - no advanced life. No counterion in retinal, and rhodopsin could not receive visible light - and there would be no vision on earth by any organism.

1. Biological sciences have come to discover in the last decades that major morphological innovation, development and body form are based on at least 16 different, but integrative mechanisms, the interplay of genes with the gene regulatory network, Trans and Retrotransposons, so-called Junk DNA, gene splicing and recombination, and at least two dozen epigenetic informational code systems, some, like the glycan ( sugar) code, far more complex than the genetic code, on the membrane - exterior side of cells, Post-transcriptional modifications (PTMs) of histones, hormones, Ion Channels and Electromagnetic Fields that are not specified by nuclear DNA, Membrane targets and patterns, Cytoskeletal arrays, Centrosomes, and inheritance by cell memory which is not defined through DNA sequences alone.

2. These varied mechanisms orchestrate gene expression, generate Cell types and patterns, perform various tasks essential to cell structure and development, are responsible for important tasks of organismal development, affect gene transcription, switch protein-coding genes on or off,  determine the shape of the body, regulate genes, provide critical structural information and spatial coordinates for embryological development,  influence the form of a developing organism and the arrangement of different cell types during embryological development, organize the axes, and act as chemical messengers for development

3. Neo-Darwinism and the Modern Synthesis have proposed traditionally a gene-centric view, a scientific metabiological proposal going back to Darwin's " On the origin of species ", where first natural selection was proposed as the mechanism of biodiversity, and later,  gene variation defining how bodies are built and organized. Not even recently proposed alternatives, like the third way, neutral theory, inclusive fitness theory, Saltationism, Saltatory ontogeny, mutationism, Genetic drift, or combined theories, do full justice by taking into account all organizational physiological hierarchy and complexity which empirical science has come to discover.

4. Only a holistic view, namely structuralism and systems biology, take into account all influences that form cell form and size, body development and growth, providing adequate descriptions of the scientific evidence. The BIG ( umbrella ) contributor to explain organismal complexity is preprogrammed instructional complex INFORMATION encoded in various languages and communication through signalling through various signalling networks  that act  on a structural level, which are pre-instructed to respond to environmental cues, development, and nutrition demands, and they are apt to communicate, crosstalk, signal, regulate, govern, control, recruit, interpret, recognize, orchestrate, elaborate strategies, guide and so forth. All codes, blueprints, and languages are inventions by intelligence. Therefore, the genetic and epigenetic codes and signalling networks and the instructions to build cells and complex biological organisms were most likely created by an intelligent agency.



connections formed between unicellular and multicellular genes that act as key regulatory hubs for normal tissue homeostasis can also contribute to malignant transformation when disrupted.

HOW LIFE MADE THE LEAP FROM SINGLE CELLS TO MULTICELLULAR ANIMALS
https://www.wired.com/2014/08/where-animals-come-from/

Unicellular and multicellular Organisms are best explained through design
https://reasonandscience.catsboard.com/t2010-unicellular-and-multicellular-organisms-are-best-explained-through-design

Signal Transduction and Signal Modulation by Cell Adhesion Receptors: The Role of Integrins, Cadherins, Immunoglobulin-Cell Adhesion Molecules, and Selectins
http://pharmrev.aspetjournals.org/content/50/2/197

Cell internet: Cells have their own internet communication channels and cargo delivery service, all in one
https://reasonandscience.catsboard.com/t2760-cell-internet-cells-have-their-own-internet-communication-channels-and-cargo-delivery-service-all-in-one

Sensation and Perception
https://courses.lumenlearning.com/wmopen-psychology/chapter/outcome-sensation-and-perception/

The evolutionary‐developmental origins of multicellularity†
https://bsapubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.3732/ajb.1300314

Researchers identify crucial mechanism delimiting functional domains of a genome – new understanding of how DNA is managed to produce specific cell functions.
https://resonance.is/researchers-identify-crucial-mechanism-delimiting-functional-domains-genome-new-understanding-dna-managed-produce-specific-cell-functions/

The front and rear of collective cell migration
http://sci-hub.tw/https://www.nature.com/articles/nrm.2015.14

A single, billion-year-old mutation helped multicellular animals evolve
https://www.uchicagomedicine.org/forefront/biological-sciences-articles/2016/january/a-single-billion-year-old-mutation-helped-multicellular-animals-evolve

The Remarkable Language of Cells
http://jonlieffmd.com/blog/the-remarkable-language-of-cells

Diversity Takes Shape: Understanding the Mechanistic and Adaptive Basis of Bacterial Morphology
https://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/article?id=10.1371/journal.pbio.1002565

Cell Communication and signaling, evidence of design
http://reasonandscience.heavenforum.org/t2181-cell-communication-and-signaling-evidence-of-design

The  essential signaling pathways   for animal development
http://reasonandscience.heavenforum.org/t2351-the-essential-signaling-pathways-for-animal-development

Control of Gene Expression and gene regulatory networks point to intelligent design
https://reasonandscience.catsboard.com/t2194-control-of-gene-expression-and-gene-regulatory-networks-point-to-intelligent-design

The momentous transition to multicellular life may not have been so hard after all
https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/06/momentous-transition-multicellular-life-may-not-have-been-so-hard-after-all

The Origins of Multicellularity
http://sci-hub.tw/https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/%28SICI%291520-6602%281998%291%3A1%3C27%3A%3AAID-INBI4%3E3.0.CO%3B2-6

Diverse evolutionary paths to cell adhesion
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2991404/

The Watchmaker Argument - Debunked (Teleological Argument - Refuted) - Really ?!!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PHmjHMbkOUM&feature=youtu.be&fbclid=IwAR0vWqmLSBd5kBt6iNWPx0it8962rnojU9cciMXBlJVmT9QWSgqqinfn6qY

Argument No.1: First and foremost, and what single-handedly debunks the Watchmaker Argument, is that it’s a False Analogy. An analogy is a comparison between things that have similar features for the purpose of explaining a principle or an idea, and in this case, Paley insists that a comparison can be made between the complexity of a watch and the complexity of the universe, which both imply that they had a designer. However, the last step is flawed because it concludes that because two things share one quality in common – that being complexity, they must also share another quality in common – a designer when this simply cannot be logically concluded.

Response: I think it CAN be rationally concluded. Here an example. It is a modern version of the watchmaker argument, which i call the Factory maker argument:

1. Blueprints, instructional information and master plans, and the making of complex machines and factories upon these are both always tracked back to an intelligent source which made them for purposeful, specific goals.  
2. Biological cells are a factory park of unparalleled gigantic complexity and purposeful adaptive design of interlinked high-tech fabrics, fully automated and self-replicating, directed by genes and epigenetic languages and signalling networks.
3. The Blueprint and instructional information stored in DNA and epigenetics, which directs the making of biological cells and organisms - the origin of both is, therefore, best explained by an intelligent designer which created life for his own purposes.

Herschel 1830 1987, p. 148:
“If the analogy of two phenomena be very close and striking, while, at the same time, the cause of one is very obvious, it becomes scarcely possible to refuse to admit the action of an analogous cause in the other, though not so obvious in itself.”

The Factory maker argument does not propose or argue that a analogy is made. It states that biological Cells are LITERALLY a factory complex.

What is a factory ?
Factory is from latin, and means fabricare, or make. Produce, manufacture. A factory or manufacturing plant is a site, usually consisting of buildings and machinery, or more commonly a complex having several buildings, where, in fully automated factories, for example, pre-programmed robots, manufacture goods or operate machines processing one product into another. A factory is a place where materials or products are produced or created. A factory is a manufacturing unit for manufacture/production of an article or thing.

Manufacturing:
Engineers, Programmers, Machine designers make blueprints of various goods or things: Factories, machines, and computers. Information transmission systems can be utilized to send the blueprints from the engineering department to the assembly sites of the factories. Carpenters, electricians, masons, machinists etc. construct machines, factories, assembly lines, robots etc. " Factories are usually full of machines, interlinked assembly lines that manufacture various kind of products.

All this is PRECISELY what cells do, but in a far far more sophisticated fashion than man-made fabrics. Biological cells run complicated and sophisticated production systems. The study of the cell’s production technology provides us with insights that are potentially useful in industrial manufacturing. When comparing cell metabolism with manufacturing techniques in the industry, we find some striking commonalities assures quality at the source, and uses component commonality to simplify production.  The organic production system can be viewed as a possible scenario for the future of manufacturing. We try to do so in this paper by studying a high-performance manufacturing system - namely, the biological cell. A careful examination of the production principles used by the biological cell reveals that cells are extremely good at making products with high robustness, flexibility, and efficiency. Section 1 describes the basic metaphor of this article, the biological cell as a production system, and shows that the cell is subject to similar performance pressures. Section 4 further deepens the metaphor by pointing out the similarities between the biological cell and a modern manufacturing system. We then point to the limits of the metaphor in §5 before we identify, in §6, four important production principles that are sources of efficiency and responsiveness for the biological cell, but that we currently do not widely observe in industrial production. For example, the intestinal bacterium, Escherichia coli,  runs 1,000–1,500 biochemical reactions in parallel. Just as in manufacturing, cell metabolism can be represented by flow diagrams in which raw materials are transformed into final products in a series of operations.


Argument No.2: If it could, then by using the same faulty logic, countless other absurd qualities could also be attributed to the universe. For example; the watch is complex; the watch was invented in the 15th century; the universe is complex; therefore, the universe was invented in the 15th century. Just because two objects share one quality in common, this doesn’t mean that they necessarily share another.

Response: This is partially true. But distracts from what is indeed true. There are features and things that we have only experience and knowledge to come from intelligent minds. 

The (past) action or signature of an intelligent designer can be detected when we see :

1. An object in nature very similar to human-made things
2. Something made based on mathematical principles
3. Systems and networks functioning based on logic gates
4. Something purposefully made for specific goals
5. Specified complexity, the instructional blueprint or a codified message  
6. Irreducible complex and interdependent systems or artefacts composed of several interlocked, well-matched parts contributing to a higher end of a complex system that would be useful only in the completion of that much larger system.
7. Order or orderly patterns
8. Hierarchically arranged systems of parts
9. Intelligence can create artefacts which use might be employed in different systems ( a wheel is used in cars and airplanes) 
10. Fine-tuning

Argument No.3: The next objection, very closely related to the first, is that it commits a False Cause Fallacy. It does this by asserting that complexity and order can only be caused a designer, when not only has this never been proven to be true, it’s actually been proven to be completely incorrect.  It completely ignores evolution by natural selection.

Response: When I called in at the Talk Heathens show, at the fifth of May 2019, and asked Stephen from Rationality Rules, if he went to a library, and took a book from the bookshelf, without mentioning any author, and in the book there were at the first pages a picture of a  blueprint, and at the following pages,  a factory build based on the precise instructions, upon that previous blueprint, how he would explain the origin of both. Either a)  intelligence or b) chance.  He jumped straight to say that I did use a black and white fallacy, a false dichotomy and that the origin could be explained by evolution through natural selection. I corrected him and explained, that it was not a false dichotomy. Evolution only starts when DNA replication is operational, and that is an abiogenesis problem. Abiogenesis cannot be explained by evolution. Therefore, the only two possible explanations are either chance, or intelligent implementation and design. 

Argument No.4: Without getting into it too deeply, natural selection has been completely and utterly proven to be an unconscious process that has given rise to countless complex and purposed organisms – which, without an understanding of natural selection, do indeed give the impression that they were deliberately designed.Or in other words, we know, for a fact, that nature can, does, and has produced remarkably complex organisms without a conscious and intelligent hand behind it.

Response: First, it must be clarified what is meant by evolution. In the article “The Meanings of Evolution,” Stephen Meyer and Michael Keas distinguished six different ways in which “evolution” is commonly used:

1. Change over time; history of nature; any sequence of events in nature
2. Changes in the frequencies of alleles in the gene pool of a population
3. Limited common descent: the idea that particular groups of organisms have descended froma common ancestor.
4. The mechanisms responsible for the change required to produce limited descent with modification; chiefly pre-programmed selection acting on random variations or mutations
5. Natural selection acting up to two random mutations as shown in malaria ( See Behe's Edge of evolution )

6. Universal common descent: the idea that all organisms have descended from a single common ancestor.
7. Blind watchmaker thesis: the idea that all organisms have descended from common ancestors through unguided, unintelligent, purposeless, material processes such as natural
selection acting on random variations or mutations; the idea that the Darwinian mechanism of natural selection acting on random variation, and other similarly naturalistic mechanisms, completely suffice to explain the origin of novel biological forms and the appearance of design in complex organisms.

There is rather little dispute or none in regards of the first five claims, and the majority of creationists agree with them. The dispute lies in the two last points, and the real mechanisms are far more diversified and complex than commonly asserted, and essentially based on pre-programmed information and signalling. 

Argument No.5:  A fourth major flaw with the Watchmaker Argument is that either commits a Special Pleading Fallacy, or it’s completely self-refuting. Its core premise asserts that purpose and complexity requires a designer, and so if we draw the Watchmaker Argument out to its logical conclusion – that there is a god and that it created the universe and everything in it.

Response: in his book: The Blind Watchmaker Richard Dawkins, writes: 
Natural selection, the blind, unconscious, automatic process which Darwin discovered, and which we now know is the explanation for the existence and apparently purposeful form of all life, has no purpose in mind. It has no mind and no mind's eye. It does not plan for the future. It has no vision, no foresight, no sight at all. If it can be said to play the role of watchmaker in .nature, it is the blind watchmaker.

Teleological explanations have played a central role throughout the history of the life sciences, but, thanks to Charles Darwin, they have been expunged from the biological sciences starting in the nineteenth century.

And yet the same textbooks often explain adaptations by reference to natural selection in language that sounds suspiciously teleological. Notice the explanatory structure implicit in the following quotation from  Albert Lehninger’s Bioenergetics: The Molecular Basis of Biological Energy Transformations (1971, 110 ). 


Thus photo-induced cyclic electron flow has a real and important purpose, namely, to transform the light energy absorbed by chlorophyll molecules in the chloroplast into phosphate bond energy.

A common response to passages such as this is to say that the use of the term “purpose” is merely a kind of shorthand for a more complicated mechanical explanation, not evidence of a commitment to teleology. Yet this passage is embedded in a detailed description of the mechanisms of photosynthesis, and historically the discovery of the process described led to a quest for its purpose. Biochemists did not feel that they understood cyclic electron flow until they figured out its biological function.

There is a concern that such explanations imply some sort of conscious, or anyway cognitive, agency – either in the form of an external, perhaps divine, agent, or in the form of an inherent drive or vital power. Much philosophical effort has been devoted in the past fifty years or so to making sense of natural teleology as a distinctive mode of explanation without accepting either of those implications.

A major problem for explanations based on evolution is the fact that evolution is not purpose driven. Natural selection would not select for components of a complex system that would have use or purpose only in the completion of that much larger system. 


In other words : Why would natural selection select an intermediate biosynthesis product, which has by its own no use for the organism, unless that product keeps going through all necessary steps, up to the point to be ready to be assembled in a larger system ?  


A minimal amount of instructional complex information is required for a gene to produce useful proteins. A minimal size of a protein is necessary for it to be functional.   Thus, before a region of DNA contains the requisite information to make useful proteins, natural selection would not select for a positive trait and play no role in guiding its evolution. 

Imagine a production line in a factory. Many robots there are lined up, and raw materials are fed into the production line. The materials arrive at Robot one. It processes the first step. Then, when ready, the product moves on and is handed over to the next Robot. Next processing step. And that procedure repeats 17 times. In the end, there is a fully formed subpart, as the door of a car. That door is part of a larger object, like the finished car. That door by its own has no use unless mounted at the right place in the car.  Nobody would project a car door without visualizing the higher end upfront, in the project and development stage, and based on the requirement, specify the complex shape of the door which precisely will fit the whole of the chassis of the car where it will be mounted. And the whole production line and each robot the right placement and sequence where each robot will be placed must be planned and implemented as well. Everything has to be projected with a higher end goal in mind. And there is an interdependence. If one of the robots ceases to work for some reason, the whole fabrication ceases, and the completion of the finished car cannot be accomplished. That means, a tiny mal connection of one of the robots in the production line of the door might stop the production of the door, and the finished car cannot be produced.

- No glycine amino acids, no pyrimidines, no DNA - no life.
- No Watson Crick base pair fine-tuning, no DNA - no life.
- No topoisomerase II or helicase proteins, no DNA replication - no life perpetuation.
- No peripheral stalk, a subunit in ATP synthase nano turbines, no energy supply trough ATP for biological cells, no advanced life.
- No cleavage of tRNA during its biosynthesis, tRNA's will not be useful for the cell, no life. 
- No nitrogenase enzymes to fix nitrogen in an energy demanding, triple bond breaking process, no ammonia, required to make amino acids - no nitrogen cycle - no advanced life.
- No chlorophylls, no absorption of light to start photosynthesis, no starch and glucose - cells will have no food supply to sustain complex organisms - no advanced life on earth.
- No water evolving complex in photosynthesis, no oxygen, no advanced life.
- No carotenoids quenching heat in chlorophylls in the antenna complex, the surrounding membrane would be burned - no advanced life.  
- No rubisco, no fix of CO2, no hidrocarbons - no advanced life.
- No counterion in retinal, and rhodopsin could not receive visible light - and there would be no vision on earth by any organism.

This is just a small example - there are many others. The salient part is - in the same manner, as a robot has no function by itself and by its own, and outside of a factory, unless placed at the right production line, getting the right substrate from another robot, processing it in the right manner, and handing it over to the next processing step - which also has to have its right function and manufacturing proceeding pre-programmed- nothing done.

Argument No.6. Then by applying the argument’s logic to itself, we must conclude that this god too had a designer, and so on and so forth for infinity… 

Response: God is eternal. By deductive reasoning, we can come to the conclusion that the God of the Bible most probably exists. Following argument requires no theology nor science which must be true based uniquely on deductive reasoning. 

1. Something cannot come into existence from absolutely nothing.


2. The present moment cannot be reached by adding individual events together from eternity.




3. Therefore, the universe must have had a beginning of time, therefore, it had a cause.




4. Therefore a non-physical, eternal, non-created & necessary first cause is the best explanation of our existence.

5. An agent endowed with free will can have a determination in a timeless dimension to operate causally at a (first) moment of time and thereby to produce a temporally first effect.
6. That cause must be supernatural in nature, (as He exists outside of His creation), Incredibly powerful (to have created all that is known), Eternal (self-existent, as He exists outside of time and space), Omnipresent (He created space and is not limited by it), Timeless and changeless (He created time),  Immaterial (because He transcends space), Personal (the impersonal can’t create personality), Necessary (as everything else depends on Him), Infinite and singular (as you cannot have two infinites),  Diverse yet has unity (as all multiplicity implies a prior singularity),  Intelligent (supremely, to create everything), Purposeful (as He deliberately created everything), Moral (no moral law can exist without a lawgiver), Caring (or no moral laws would have been given)

Only the God of the Bible is described with the above-described characteristics.

God is omnipresent (Psalm 139:7-12; Jeremiah 23:24)
God is omniscient (Psalm 147:4-5)
God is omnipotent (Jeremiah 32:17; Psalm 135:6)
God is Spirit (John 4:24)
God is in a league of His own (Isaiah 46:9)
God is immortal and invisible (1 Timothy 1:17)
God is the Creator (Genesis 1:1; Colossians 1:16)
God is unchanging (Malachi 3:6)
God is sovereign (Psalm 115:3)
God is One, yet He exists in three persons (Matthew 3:16-17; 28:19; 2 Corinthians 13:14)
God is loving (John 3:16; 1 John 4:8 )
God is gracious and merciful (Jonah 4:2; Deuteronomy 4:31)
God is righteous (Psalm 11:7)
God is holy (Leviticus 19:2; 1 Peter 1:16)
God is just (Deuteronomy 32:4; Isaiah 30:18)
God is forgiving (1 John 1:9)
God is compassionate (James 5:11)

Argument No.6: By definition, Special Pleading is an argument in which the speaker deliberately creates an exception to their argument without justifying why, and that is precisely what one must do to prevent the Watchmaker Argument from being completely self-refuting. 

Response: “All lemons are citrus. Mushrooms are not citrus.”
This isn’t special pleading because there is a category difference. God is not in the same category as the creation. God is in a league of His own. He is… the great I AM.

Pointing out the obvious is not special pleading. The natural universe had a beginning. Therefore, the cause of the natural universe must be supernatural.

If logic does not account for justifiable special pleading then such logic is clearly flawed. Of course, an Infinite Creator Who created everything would involve a justifiable special pleading. Such Creator would not be like the rest of us. It is as simple as seeing the difference between an Infinite Being (notice I didn't say "existence") and billions of "finite beings."
The One Infinite Being is clearly different. The One Infinite Being Who created all existence is quite different than those finite beings who are created by such Being.
It is as easy as seeing the difference between "those who have a beginning" who are finite verses an "Infinite Creator" Who has no beginning and alone possesses the attribute of Aseity.
In theology there are several (what we call) incommunicable attributes of God. 1. would be omniscience. 2. omnipresence. 3. omnisapience 4. Asiety 5. immutability 6. I would include omnitemporal being. There are others. You see, only God is infinite everywhere. Only God is the Creator of the universe. Everyone else is different.
This is why we have something as basic as justifiable special pleading to account for this every clear difference between an Infinite Creator Who created everything.... and all other finite existences.


Argument No.7: Even if it were accepted as a sound argument, it would only prove that a universe had a universe designer – and that’s it. It wouldn’t prove a particular religion to be true. Or, as Hitchens put it, “Even if the watchmaker argument was valid, you, as a theist, still have all of your work ahead of you”.

Response: The teleological argument, or the argument of design has never been intended to point to a specific deity, but merely, that the features observed in the natural world are best explained by design. 

Argument No.8: In addition to the Watchmaker Argument not supporting theism, its logic is also inconsistent with the description of most monotheistic gods – and certainly the Abrahamic ones. An all-powerful and all-loving god would not create organisms with the type of suboptimal design that can be seen in nature. From vestigial organs to birth defect to pregnancy complications, it cannot logical follow that an all-powerful, all-loving god can be responsible for this. 


Response: Atheists commonly consider themselves very intelligent, rational and logical, and not rarely feel intellectually superior compared to believers. Funny though is, that when they take out off their hat, from their repertoire of arguments to reject God, as it quite frequently happens, the claim of bad design: they point to a list of supposedly badly designed and/or vestigial organs. Funny though, they never apply the bad design argument to their thinking organ, their own brain and their mind, which they presuppose has superior functional abilities, and was well designed.... this is a blatant contradiction. Unbelievers commonly argue about bad design and vestigial organs, but in order to argue about bad design, design, bad or not, must be assumed in the first place. Arguing that bad design is evidence of no design is a logical fallacy.

Neither, secondly, would it invalidate our conclusion, that the watch sometimes went wrong, or that it seldom went exactly right. The purpose of the machinery, the design, and the designer, might be evident, and in the case supposed would be evident, in whatever way we accounted for the irregularity of the movement, or whether we could account for it or not. It is not necessary that a machine be perfect, in order to show with what design it was made: still less necessary, where the only question is, whether it were made with any design at all. 
Paley, (Natural Theology. 12th edition. J. Faulder: London, 1809, Chapter I, pp. 4-5)

Meaning that either that god isn’t omnipotent or that it isn’t omnibenevolent – or both! So, to recap, the Watchmaker Argument is flawed because: It’s a False Analogy; It commits a False Cause Fallacy; It completely ignores evolution by Natural Selection; It commits a Special Pleading Fallacy or it’s completely Self-Refuting; It’s self-contradicting; It doesn’t imply a designer, but rather many designers; It acts as if watches are created from nothing; It doesn’t support theism; and, It doesn’t support the concept of an omnipotent and omnibenevolent god. It’s not a sound argument… in fact, it’s thoroughly debunked. As you might have noticed, this video is quite a bit longer than many of my others, but to be perfectly honest with you I think it needed to be. While the Watchmaker Argument is thoroughly flawed, it is nevertheless what I personally consider to be the best argument for a deity that there has ever been… and hence, it deserved this royal kick-in! Thanks for the view, and I’ll leave you with this overwhelmingly powerful argument to consider: Armored Skeptic has a YouTube channel. Armored Skeptic has three hundred thousand subscribers. Rationality Rules has a YouTube channel. Therefore, Rationality Rules has three hundred thousand subscribers.

It is a common claim that evolution is not only a theory, but also a fact, and that irreducible complexity has been refuted. As soon as we give a closer look into molecular biology, we see that is not the case. My profession is machine designer. As such, I understand what it takes to make complex machines. The first step is always to define the goal, and defining the task of the machine. Second is sitting on the drawing board and conceptualize and plan how to make the machine that performs in accordance to the goal set. In basically all cases, many parts are indispensable, that is, irreducible. In biology, that begins already with the fact that biological Cells require a minimal number of parts to keep the basic functions of life. A science paper from 2005 did set the minimal number of proteins alone at 561 proteins. While not mentioning it, implicitly that demonstrates, Cells are irreducibly complex. 

In biology, theoretically many huge transitions had to occur to get to complex multicellular organisms like mammals. I gave just a superficial overlook to show what would be required to go from unicellular to multicellular organisms and mentioned ten main points.  Various innovations would have had to occur simultaneously. A new aggregation of differentiated Cells would only be possible with the immediate emergency and set up of a gene regulatory network, new communication channels, and signalling languages, and cell adhesion mechanisms, all together. Both, signalling languages and codes, communications channels, and the requirement of various innovations at the same time are strong evidence that an intelligent planner with foresight is required to implement all these things. Unguided, random, directionless accidents by small steps over a long period of time, by mutations, natural selection, drift and gene flow are inadequate explanations, therefore, the blind watchmaker can be put to rest. He is an inadequate watchmaker. Only a super powerful immensely, unimaginably intelligent creator is reasonable to infer as being capable of such feats.

1 Each of the topics mentioned in this video huge. Pinpointing what REALLY defines body architecture, the orchestration of organism development, cell shape and body form and the mechanisms of adaptation and first degree of speciation, and exposing the correct explanation of biochemical mechanisms of biodiversity is the holy grail of biological sciences. When science claims that evolution is a fact, it must be defined what is meant by it.


2 There are still too many open questions in regards of macro scale evolution which have not been answered conclusively. Only who has no clue can claim that micro leads to macro. It does not.  Preprogrammed codified information and signalling replaces Darwin's theory and its various subsequent adaptations, extensions, and new proposals like the modern extended synthesis or the so-called " third way ".


3 The true mechanism is " Biochemical systems programming and signalling", and special creation of species and/or kinds by an intelligent powerful creator. Long periods of time and gradual, evolutionary development is not possible, face the fact that cells and organisms work like gigantic interlocked machines and factory complexes, where in any case, if one tiny part is missing, nothing goes.


4 Natural selection would not select for components of a complex system that would be useful only in the completion of that much larger system. For example, just a tiny subunit essential in the oxygen evolving complex, and no oxygen would fill the atmosphere, and not advanced life forms could exist on earth. I think the exposed requirements to form multicellular organisms, which is however just a tiny fraction of the trajectory from supposed last universal common ancestor to humans, this alone demonstrates mount unsurmountable that evolution would have to be able to overcome.


5  A watchmaker is required to make a watch. A blind watchmaker can't make a watch. Life is more complex than any watch, or any artifact made by man. Only upon what has been exposed in this video, i think it is very reasonable and rational to believe in a powerful super intelligent creator, which did set up life for his purposes. 

The Watchmaker argument, refuted by evolution?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MdjjqBI_EzI&t=1701s

This video is a powerful tool to demonstrate why micro does not lead to macroevolution, why Darwins Theory of evolution does not withstand scrutiny and the enormous biological
challenge that would have had to be overcome to go from unicellular to multicellular life.

Some requirements for transition to multicellularity: 10.00
1, Cell differentiation: 13.32
2. Morphogenesis 18.15
3. Defining each Cell's specific function 25.40
4. Cell migration 27.07
5. Connecting adjacent cells 31.53
6. Cell-Cell communication 33.24
7. Adaptation & microevolution 43.35
8. The genetic program limiting body growth 47.12
9. Gene regulatory network 50.28
10. Setting up sexual reproduction 58.34
Endnotes: 1.02.54

Has Paley's Watchmaker argument been debunked?
https://reasonandscience.catsboard.com/t2860-has-paley-s-watchmaker-argument-been-debunked

If you enjoyed the video, please like, comment, subscribe my channel, share, and help my channel to grow. Thank you.

The watch, the universe, planets, and life: What they have in common

https://reasonandscience.catsboard.com/t2860-has-paley-s-watchmaker-argument-been-debunked#8777

Paley famously made an argument by analogy of the universe as a watch and of God as a watchmaker, according to which complex structures, like a watch, could not emerge accidentally but require the existence of a rational designer, in this case, a watchmaker.  The watch has a function. The watch movement has a function, and each part of the movement has a function and is so constructed that it serves the end purpose of the watch.  Also, the right materials have to be identified and selected in order to have functional parts. For example, each wheel of the watch mechanism must have the exact circle diameter and fit and be made of the right material. If one wheel does not have the right diameter and size, nothing goes. The wheel train is a series of interlocking gears that drive the timekeeping hands within the movement. So the wheels must work in a joint venture in an integrated fashion together. If one wheel is exchanged using a wheel of different sizes, the entire function either breaks down, or all other part sizes must be adapted to restore the function.  Intelligent designers are necessary that have the power and foreknowledge to make a project, a design of every component, and how to assemble everything together.
 
The Laws of physics and constants, the initial conditions, and fundamental forces are finely adjusted in an unimaginably narrow range to permit the initial stretch out and expansion of the universe. The forces must also be secured, in order for there not to be constant oscillations of these forces, and in the end, a chaotic universe. We know that the fundamental forces do not change across all the universe. That permits the creation of a cosmos with life-permitting conditions. There are infinite possible ways that the math that grounds the laws of physics, and values of the fundamental constants and force interactions of the universe could have been chosen. There is no reason why there are four, rather than for example ten fundamental forces. This year, the news reported the existence of an eventual new undiscovered sub-atomic particle or new force, making muons, which are one of the fundamental particles, wobbling at a faster rate than expected. Nor is there physical necessity that they stand in a functional relationship together ( coupling constants) to permit atoms, stars, galaxies, and planets that orbit around a star, and in the end, chemistry, and life. In fact, Paul Davies states: “There is not a shred of evidence that the Universe is logically necessary. Indeed, as a theoretical physicist, I find it rather easy to imagine alternative universes that are logically consistent, and therefore equal contenders of reality”. Life requires a number of different constants to be related to each other in unusual and precise ways. There is a peculiar relationship between the mass of the proton, the mass of the electron, the strength of gravity, and the strength of electromagnetism. The same coincidence must hold for stars to emit photons with the right energy to power chemical reactions. This is quite a coincidence, given the number of cosmic dials one must tune for the energy of a photon of light emerging from a star to be roughly equal to the energy of chemical bonds. The values of all the constants and force strengths must be satisfied simultaneously to have a universe hospitable to life.  Modifying the value of one of the fundamental constants, something invariably goes wrong, leading to a lifeless universe, void of atoms. When we change one fine-tuned parameter, and it does not work, and a second constant is adjusted to fix the problem(s), the result, generally, is to create three new problems for each one that is solved. Our universe has unique conditions that are life-permitting, depending on a series of "coincidences", that must be right all at once, and work together in an integrated fashion, in as much as the gears and wheels of a watch must be finely adjusted to each other. The best explanation of the fact that the watch is so constructed that each of its parts serves the purpose of the watch is that the watch had an intelligent designer. Analogously, the best explanation of the fact that the parameters, laws of physics, and finely-tuned conditions of the universe are set right in an interdependent fashion, serving the purpose to permit the nucleosynthesis of atoms, the periodic table, chemistry, molecules, and in the end, advanced complex life, is that it had an intelligent designer. This is both, an argument of inference to the best explanation, and as well an argument from analogy. Both, valid epistemic propositions.

1. The universe is fashioned, constructed, and finely adjusted in a way to permit function, that is, it is suited to permit advanced life.
2. This fact is well-explained based on the action of an intelligent designer. The "No-God hypothesis" is too stupid. The IQ of its mechanism is zero. It has no mind to select purposefully to bring forward a meaningful outcome.
3. Hence, Intelligent design is the most case-adequate explanation.

Objection: Our universe has not the function to create life. If it does, it is a lucky coincidence.
Reply: If design is true, we would expect that God created the universe with the right parameters to be able to host life. If naturalism is true, we should/would expect no universe at all, or one that is unable to host life.

Van Cleef & Arpels Complication Poetique Midnight Planetarium Watch
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VjFuqVU2iK4