Chapter 33
Baroque Design: Gratuitous Genome Complexities
“For natural theologians in centuries past, as well as for adherents to present-day versions of strict religious creationism, biotic complexity is the hallmark—the unquestionable signature—of ID. However, gratuitous or unnecessary biological complexity—as opposed to an economy of design—would seem to be the antithesis of thoughtful organic engineering. Yet, by objective scientific evidence, gratuitous and often-dysfunctional complexities (both in molecular structure and molecular operations) are so nearly ubiquitous as to warrant the status of hallmarks of the human genome.”75
The human genome is a relatively newly understood area of bad design.
In his book The Design Revolution, Dr. Dembski claims that the human genome must have been designed, because it is too complex to have happened any other way. What a shame, then, that he didn’t look at the real human genome. If he had, he would have seen something so messy and dangerous that it would never be attributed to a conscious designer, much less an intelligent one.
Here’s why the real human genome is a case of bad design.
Try to imagine instructions for putting up a building that need to be copied many times, so that many different work crews can build their separate parts, all of which will have to fit together in the final building.
Then imagine that there are certain parts of the instructions that have to be followed exactly, in order to have a safe, usable building. For instance, the ventilation shafts have to fit together properly, the foundation has to be strong enough, the materials used in framing the building must be adequately strong, and the electrical wiring must be safe.
Then imagine that for every one copy of the electrical wiring diagram, you get five extra copies of blueprints for the ventilation shafts, not because you need them, but because that’s the way the copies come out. This is the case with the human genome. This is bad design. The parts of our genome that are simply extra, unneeded copies of various genetic sequences are known as duplicons.
Imagine further that one piece of the directions for building and operating the furnace is in one part of the instructions, while the remaining pieces of those directions are located in a different part of the instructions. This is the case with the human genome. This is bad design. A piece of our genome is stored in parts of our cells called mitochondria. The rest of our genome is stored in the nuclei of our cells. In addition, the genetic structure in our mitochondria is different in various ways from the genetic structure in our cells’ nuclei.
Imagine still further that some of these instructions are carried out first in one place, and then in another, with the project being stopped at a crucial point and transferred to the other location. What’s more, in one location it is always windy and rainy, and the instructions frequently get damaged while they are there, but the building project has to go forward anyway, even though the instructions may have been damaged, and the building is therefore likely to be built incorrectly. Why would anybody make part of the building process take place in an unprotected area where crucial instructions get damaged as a matter of course? This is also the case with the human genome. This is bad design.
Our mitochondria have some, but not all, the genes that are needed for mitochondria to work. The remaining genes are in the cell’s nucleus. Some crucial genes have to spend time being exposed to the cell’s fluid-filled interior. This has a high concentration of chemicals that lead to mutations, that is, bad copying. Why would a wise designer do this?
Imagine further that certain parts of the instructions can copy themselves independently, and then insert those new copies into random places in the instructions without notifying anybody, and without any concern for what gets damaged or confused where it splices itself in.
Then imagine that sometimes, these independently-made copies insert themselves in such a way that some of the important instructions that they insert themselves into wind up getting damaged or even deleted as a consequence. This results in damage to or even failure of the resultant building. This is the case with our genome. This is bad design.
Imagine further that these rogue, independently copying elements made up 46 percent76 of the total instructions for making the building.
This is the case with our genome. This is bad design.
These independently copying elements in our genome are known as transposable elements.
Then imagine further still that the process for copying the instructions for all the work crews is so bad in general, that mistakes in the copying happen on a regular basis, resulting in numerous buildings that are so bad that they are unsafe to use. Then imagine further that many of the fatal mistakes in copying could be avoided, if only a few simple changes to the copying processes had been made.
This is the case with the human genome. This is bad design.
The part of our genome that is like a set of building instructions is our DNA. Unfortunately, it is pretty easy for DNA to get copied incorrectly so that there are errors in the copy. This is called mutation.
Mutations—A Part of Life
Let’s start with some basics. The human genome mutates. All the time. In our bodies, this can create cancer. In our reproductive cells, this can lead to sons and daughters with Huntington’s chorea, ALS, hemophilia, and other awful and unnecessary genetic diseases. If human genetic material didn’t mutate, then we wouldn’t get all these diseases.
Mutations shouldn’t exist in a designed system. They are far worse than useless in a system that has been designed. In manufacturing organizations around the world, systems are deliberately put into place to minimize random variation in products, and particularly to minimize dangerous variations. Human beings are pretty good at keeping random changes in their own work down to a bare minimum.
Yet somehow, this Designer who is powerful enough to have created us all hasn’t figured out basic quality assurance. Photocopying machines work better than this!
Evolution Requires Mutation
On the other hand, the basic mechanism of evolution is mutation, followed by natural selection. These lousy copying mechanisms make sense once you realize that evolution could not take place without copying errors.
That’s how evolution works! That’s how you get a new species, or even several new species, from one original species. Mutation is one of the fundamental drivers of evolution. It is, for better and worse, the reason that we exist as human beings. We got here because of errors in copying, followed by massive, relentless selection by nature. This selection determined which erroneous copies survived and copied themselves, and which erroneous copies died before they could reproduce.
So mutations are the hallmark of an evolved system. Without mutation, there would be no evolution. Dangerous mutations are an unfortunate part of evolution. Individuals who get dangerous mutations often die. Evolution, which is an unconscious process, doesn’t care.
This is why mutations shouldn’t exist in a designed system, but must in an evolved one. Without mutations, evolution wouldn’t happen. But without mutations, a designed system would be much better. Our genome has numerous properties that encourage it to mutate frequently.
So what do you think? Did this mutation-friendly genome come about through evolution, which depends on mutation to work, or did it come about through an intelligent designer, who could have and should have done a lot more to make mutations rare and unusual?
Mutations Drive Evolution, but They are Harmful to Individuals
Although mutations are necessary for evolution, they can also be deadly. For instance, in every cell of your body, simple copying errors can cause cancer. In fact, the other word for something that causes cancer—a carcinogen—is a mutagen, that is, something that causes mutation. Almost half of all Americans develop cancer during their lifetimes, and a fifth will die from it.77 All these are caused by incorrect copying of DNA. So if you know anyone who has had cancer, please remember that their disease was caused by our genome’s tendency to get it’s copying wrong. And copying itself is one of our genome’s fundamental jobs.
What’s more, when there are errors in the DNA copies that are located in sperm cells or egg cells, a baby resulting from them may have numerous genetic diseases, such as the hemophilia that would have killed Czar Nicholas II’s son, if the Bolsheviks hadn’t killed him first.
Transposable elements alone cause so much damage that they are responsible for a whole host of deadly human diseases, including hemophilia,78 neurofibromatosis, choroideremia, cholinesterase deficiency, Apert syndrome, Dent’s disease, β-thalassemia, Walker-Warburg syndrome, Duschenne muscular dystrophy, and retinitis pigmentosa.79
Mutations in general can debilitate the nervous system, liver, pancreas, bones, eyes, ears, skin, urinary and reproductive tracts, endocrine system, blood and other features of the circulatory system, muscles, joints, dentition, immune system, digestive tract, limbs, lungs, and almost any other body part you can name. Many of these problems will shorten a person’s life, and about half will cause death before the age of thirty years. In many cases, the symptoms are horrific.
Why haven’t the ID people heard of all these diseases?
Here’s what happens to people with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS, also called Lou Gehrig’s disease)—one of many diseases resulting from mutation. Ask yourself if this sounds like it was made by an intelligent designer: the nerves that tell your muscles what to do slowly die. As they die, the muscles they control get weaker and eventually die. As the disease progresses, the people lose control of their arms, legs, and body. Eventually, patients lose the ability to breathe. Along the way, they have trouble speaking and swallowing, and their gag reflex becomes overactive. Most people die within three to five years of being diagnosed.
All because of one gene mutation.
One would think that God could do better.
75. John C. Avise, “Footprints of nonsentient design inside the human genome,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, vol, 107, suppl. 2, May 11, 2010, 8969–76, http://www.pnas.org/content/107/suppl.2/8969.full.pdf.
76. Victoria P. Belancio, Prescott L. Deininger, and Astrid M. Roy-Engel, “LINE dancing in the human genome: transposable elements and disease,” Genome Med., 2009, 1(10) 97, DOI: 10.1186/gm97.
77. Elaine N. Marieb, Human Anatomy and Physiology, 6th ed. (San Francisco: Pearson/Benjamin Cummings), 145.
78. B. A. Dombroski, S. L. Mathias, E. Nanthakumar, A. F. Scott, H. H. Kazazian Jr., “Isolation of an active human transposable element,” Science, December 20, 1991, 254 (5039) 1805–8.
79. See Julia A. McMillan, Ralph D. Feigin, Catherine DeAngelis, and M. Douglas Jones, Oski’s Pediatrics: Principles & Practice, 4th ed. (Philadelphia: Lippincott Williams and Wilkins, 2006).