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Embryonic Development Reveals “Staggering Complexity”

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Biology
Intelligent Design
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Oh my. I recently cited a paper on the evolution of embryonic development and how the evidence contradicts evolutionary theory and common descent. Even the evolutionists, though in understated terms, admitted there were problems. Evolutionary analyses are “reaching their limits,” it is difficult to “conclude anything about evolutionary origins,” genetic similarities “do not necessarily imply common ancestry,” and “conserved regulatory networks can become unrecognizably divergent.”

In other words, as in all other disciplines within the life sciences, embryonic development is not complying with evolutionary theory. The science contradicts the theory.

But there is much more to the paper, and as a reader noticed, the authors give a rather blunt admission of the magnitude of the problem, not often seen in the literature:

One of the main reasons for Duboule’s pessimism about the return of the EvoDevo comet is the staggering complexity and diversity of cellular and developmental regulatory processes. The configuration space for realistic models of such systems is vast, high dimensional, and potentially infinitely complex. [Emphasis added.]

“Staggering complexity”? Staggering diversity? The configuration space is “vast” and “high-dimensional”?

And it is “potentially infinitely complex”? And we are to believe this is the product of random mutations?

Photo credit: belindalampcc, via Pixabay.

Cross-posted at Darwin’s God.

Cornelius G. Hunter

Fellow, Center for Science and Culture
Cornelius G. Hunter is a graduate of the University of Illinois where he earned a Ph.D. in Biophysics and Computational Biology. He is Adjunct Professor at Biola University and author of the award-winning Darwin’s God: Evolution and the Problem of Evil. Hunter’s other books include Darwin’s Proof, and his newest book Science’s Blind Spot (Baker/Brazos Press). Dr. Hunter’s interest in the theory of evolution involves the historical and theological, as well as scientific, aspects of the theory. His blog is Darwin’s God.
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