Free Republic
Browse · Search
General/Chat
Topics · Post Article

Skip to comments.

The Chicken-and-Egg Problem is Everywhere in Biology
The Stream ^ | May 6, 2019 | Marcos Eberlin

Posted on 05/07/2019 7:14:32 AM PDT by Heartlander

The Chicken-and-Egg Problem is Everywhere in Biology

By Marcos Eberlin Published on May 6, 2019


We are all taught it in school: Blind evolution produced all the living forms around us, one small step at a time. What they don’t tell us: The story faces countless chicken-and-egg problems, beginning with the actual chicken and egg.

Which Came First?

A chick embryo’s development is a wonder to behold. So too is the egg in which it develops. The egg yolk and egg white contain just the right food the chick will need before it hatches. The eggshell also has microscopic pores that let air in so the chick can breathe. The developing bird then generates a network of capillaries to absorb oxygen from the air and release carbon dioxide.

Just before hatching, special membranes in the egg trap enough air so the chick can take its first breath before it leaves the shell.

The eggshell is hard enough to protect the developing chick, yet fragile enough for the full-grown chick to peck its way out. The shell and its contents are masterpieces of engineering that both nourish and protect the baby bird.

But there would be no egg without a chicken to produce it. Without an egg there can be no chicken, but without a chicken there can be no egg. How could the system have evolved one small functional step at a time? It’s an old question, one that Darwinists would like you to think they have answered satisfactorily, and long ago. They haven’t.

The chicken-and-egg problem is the archetypal example of causal circularity. To get A we need B, but to get B we first need A. We can’t have one without the other. To get both together, we need foresight — an engineer capable of planning for the future.

Membranes: An Evolutionary Wall

We find many such examples of causal circularity throughout living systems. As I explore in my latest book, living cells need to be surrounded by membranes. No membranes, no life. And not just membranes. Membranes have a myriad of phospholipids to resist pH and temperature fluctuations. They also have and channels that enable a cell to control its internal environment.

Those channels require complex and specialized proteins to function. Yet without a skilled biochemist, the necessary proteins are made only in cells — which existed long before there were biochemists. Without stable membranes loaded with protein-operated channels, there are no cells. But without cells there are no proteins to form membrane channels.

Information Circularity

Or consider this dilemma: Living cells contain DNA and RNA — both exquisitely suited for the jobs they perform. From the chemistry of their components to the relative stability of these complex molecules themselves. Without DNA and RNA, the cell would fail to synthesize the proteins it needs. Yet without a suite of complex proteins, the cell would fail to synthesize more DNA. It could never divide. And without another suite of complex proteins, the cell couldn’t make RNA.

No DNA and RNA, no proteins. No proteins, no DNA or RNA.

And without ribosomes, RNA messages cannot be translated into proteins. And guess what: ribosomes are made of RNAs and proteins.

After proteins have been translated by the ribosomes from RNA, chaperones help them rapidly fold into the right three-dimensional shapes. Without the right shape, a protein is useless. Actually, it’s a threat to the cell. But chaperones are made of proteins. Proteins that need chaperones to fold them into their functional shapes.

Once again, we have causal circularity. No chaperones, no properly folded proteins. No properly folded proteins, no chaperones.

We weren’t around to witness the origin of any of these biological marvels. But in all cases of causal circularity where we can trace them back to their origin, we always come to a mind. A designer with the foresight to anticipate the circularity problem and to implement a solution to a future problem.

Circles that Point

Where does all this chicken-egg circularity lead? Let’s take it in steps.

First, we see many instances of causal circularity in biology. These pose engineering challenges whose solutions require on-time delivery of multiple, essential, and well-orchestrated parts.

Second, we know from our uniform experience that the ability to anticipate and solve such problems before they happen is a unique characteristic of intelligent minds.

Third, there are no demonstrated examples of unguided, mindless processes anticipating and solving problems that require a sophisticated orchestration of fine-tuned parts, all brought together for an origin event. Hand-waving references to cases that are assumed rather than demonstrated do not count. Neither do arguments based on question-begging logic — for example, “Common features must mean common descent” and “Common descent must mean blind evolution.”

Therefore, our uniform experience provides us with only one type of cause with the demonstrated capacity to anticipate and solve such problems — intelligent design: the best and, indeed, the only casually adequate explanation for the many examples of apparent foresight in biology.

The evidence in biology for a designer with foresight is not merely apparent. It is insistently real.

 

Biochemist Marcos Eberlin, a member of the Brazilian Academy of Sciences, has published over 800 scientific articles and is author of the new book Foresight: How the Chemistry of Life Reveals Planning and Purpose.
Foresight cover

Help us champion truth, freedom, limited government and human dignity. Support The Stream »


TOPICS: Education; Reference; Science
KEYWORDS:
Navigation: use the links below to view more comments.
first 1-2021-22 next last

1 posted on 05/07/2019 7:14:32 AM PDT by Heartlander
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | View Replies]

To: Heartlander

And the proof to the bio genesis theory? It only LOOKS like intelligent design, it is really randomness and time.


2 posted on 05/07/2019 7:17:05 AM PDT by PeterPrinciple (Thinking Caps are no longer being issued but there must be a warehouse full of them somewhere.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Heartlander

Read once on a kiosk:

“We ordered a chicken and an egg on Amazon. We’ll let you know.”


3 posted on 05/07/2019 7:17:18 AM PDT by ConservativeWarrior (Fall down 7 times, stand up 8. - Japanese proverb)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Heartlander

I used to be blind but now I see.


4 posted on 05/07/2019 7:23:57 AM PDT by DungeonMaster (Prov 24: Do not fret because of evildoers. Do not associate with those given to change.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Heartlander

This is very similar to the irreducible complexity argument.


5 posted on 05/07/2019 7:24:04 AM PDT by circlecity
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: circlecity

From a zoologists point of view...

Reptiles-Dinosaurs laid eggs long before the chicken evolved.

Eggs came before the chicken.

END


6 posted on 05/07/2019 7:31:22 AM PDT by GRRRRR (Make America Greater Than Ever Before!)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 5 | View Replies]

To: Heartlander

Leviticus 11:19 & v 30: bird and reptile share same name in Biblical Hebrew. And many reptiles are egg layers.


7 posted on 05/07/2019 7:32:11 AM PDT by onedoug
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Heartlander

Darwin’s work happened at a time when the cell was still considered simple by many. They were wrong. But before the complexity of the cell started to really work it’s way into the public’s awareness a whole slew of people had latched onto evolution as a way to advance other interests, secularization and dechristianization in particular. These other reasons to believe don’t demand evolution be anything but taught as fact, to set up in the minds of kids (and then adults) that life doesn’t need a designer, the Lord.

It is no coincidence that some of these same secularists also started some of the worst lies about Islam — such as Islam preserved knowledge while Christians slid backwards into ignorance ... never mentioning that Muslim hoards destroyed library after library or how their wars of conquest and piracy so disrupted commerce and society that they caused the dark ages.


8 posted on 05/07/2019 7:44:43 AM PDT by Rurudyne (Standup Philosopher)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Heartlander
No problem in scripture, though.

God created creatures, not eggs.

And Adam and Eve never went through puberty.

I guess them to have been created in the 33 year old area of age as WE understand age.

Guys seem to get out of the barroom around that age and man up to be husbands and fathers.

9 posted on 05/07/2019 7:44:44 AM PDT by knarf (I say things that are true, I have no proof, but they're true)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: GRRRRR

what does that have to do with chickens? And which came first the reptile or the egg?


10 posted on 05/07/2019 8:14:20 AM PDT by circlecity
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 6 | View Replies]

To: onedoug

The question remains.

How can there be an egg without a creature to lay it, and how can there be a creature that lays eggs without an egg in which the creature incubates?


11 posted on 05/07/2019 8:21:26 AM PDT by Westbrook (Children do not divide your love, they multiply it)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 7 | View Replies]

To: Heartlander

12 posted on 05/07/2019 8:23:48 AM PDT by PapaBear3625 ("Those who can make you believe absurdities, can make you commit atrocities." -- Voltaire)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Westbrook
How can there be an egg without a creature to lay it, and how can there be a creature that lays eggs without an egg in which the creature incubates?

Single-celled organisms reproduce by fission. Simple multi-celled organisms can reproduce by budding. Fish eggs do not have hard shells nor air pockets. At each level, as organisms get more complex, so do their reproductive mechanisms.

13 posted on 05/07/2019 8:28:00 AM PDT by PapaBear3625 ("Those who can make you believe absurdities, can make you commit atrocities." -- Voltaire)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 11 | View Replies]

To: GRRRRR

Eggs came before the chicken.

END

Next up!

If a hen and a half can lay an egg and a half in a day and a half.
The farmer likes two eggs each morning for breakfast.

How many hens needed to produce one dozen eggs in six days?


14 posted on 05/07/2019 8:31:04 AM PDT by DUMBGRUNT ("The enemy has overrun us. We are blowing up everything. Vive la France!")
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 6 | View Replies]

To: Heartlander

God started it all rolling, with single cell critters that split into two to reproduce. Somewhere along the way He decided one of them would excrete a piece of itself instead of splitting to create the new organism. When He decided they should leave the water and occupy the land, He tried shells to stabilize the moist contents. Then He made some in which the egg hatched and was nurtured within the body of the adult.

He did good.


15 posted on 05/07/2019 8:43:49 AM PDT by JimRed ( TERM LIMITS, NOW! Build the Wall Faster! TRUTH is the new HATE SPEECH.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Westbrook

I would guess that not since all reptiles lay eggs, there might seem an “evolutionary” process whereby most currently do, whereas birds, later in this process, all do.

In short though, it’s a mystery. Yet I believe God wants us to pursue and understand His creation to whatever extent that we ultimately may.


16 posted on 05/07/2019 8:49:35 AM PDT by onedoug
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 11 | View Replies]

To: PapaBear3625

And that single cell fission takes an incredibly complex set of genetic instructions, and processes, to occur. Where did that come from? You can push the argument back but you can’t eliminate (or answer) it.


17 posted on 05/07/2019 8:49:39 AM PDT by circlecity
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 13 | View Replies]

To: GRRRRR
Reptiles-Dinosaurs laid eggs long before the chicken evolved.

True. And so did insects and fish.

18 posted on 05/07/2019 8:53:26 AM PDT by zot
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 6 | View Replies]

To: JimRed

He did good.


I don’t know. My dog makes his own vitamin C and I can’t.
Our backs seem designed to give us problems and on a planet covered almost entirely in water, we don’t have gills. God seems to be an underachiever.


19 posted on 05/07/2019 8:54:26 AM PDT by sparklite2 (Don't mind me. I'm just a contrarian.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 15 | View Replies]

To: PapaBear3625

Where does the new information come from, and how is it merged into the code for the correct expression of the required proteins?


20 posted on 05/07/2019 9:08:07 AM PDT by Westbrook (Children do not divide your love, they multiply it)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 13 | View Replies]


Navigation: use the links below to view more comments.
first 1-2021-22 next last

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.

Free Republic
Browse · Search
General/Chat
Topics · Post Article

FreeRepublic, LLC, PO BOX 9771, FRESNO, CA 93794
FreeRepublic.com is powered by software copyright 2000-2008 John Robinson