Darwin Unhinged: The Bugs in Evolution

A couple of examples in detail of the two classes of "fine tuning" are the carbon resonance, and photosynthesis.

The carbon resonance, a very good example of fine tuning in the laws of physics (from https://salvomag.com/article/salvo46/the...le-element ):

"Stars fuse carbon and oxygen from helium through a series of reactions known as the triple-alpha process, in which three helium nuclei are combined to make one carbon nucleus. In the first step in this process, two helium nuclei (with 2 protons each) fuse together to make beryllium (which has 4 protons). Next, a helium nucleus fuses with a beryllium nucleus to make carbon (which has 6 protons). Then, some carbon nuclei fuse with helium nuclei to make oxygen (which has 8 protons).

The only reason that the triple-alpha process produces any carbon or oxygen at all is because in the first step, the ground state energy level (i.e., the state of an atom when all of its electrons are at their lowest energy levels) of the beryllium-8 nucleus (containing 4 protons and 4 neutrons) almost exactly equals the ground state energy level of two helium-4 nuclei (2 protons and 2 neutrons each). In the second step, the ground state energy level of a beryllium-8 nucleus plus a helium-4 nucleus almost exactly equals the energy level of an excited state of a carbon-12 nucleus (6 protons and 6 neutrons). In the third step, the ground state energy level of a carbon-12 nucleus at 7.65 million electron volts is just slightly larger than the ground state energy level of an oxygen-16 nucleus (8 protons and 8 neutrons) at 7.12 million electron volts.1

If it were not for the near equivalences or resonances of the nuclear energy levels of two helium nuclei relative to a beryllium nucleus, and of a beryllium nucleus plus a helium nucleus relative to a carbon nucleus, the universe would contain very little or no carbon and very little or no elements heavier than carbon. Life would be impossible.

Furthermore, unless the difference in the nuclear energy levels between a carbon nucleus and an oxygen nucleus were precisely 0.53 million electron volts, the universe would contain either a lot of carbon and no oxygen or a lot of oxygen and no carbon. Either way, physical life would be impossible in the universe."

Fine-tuning in biology - one of many irreducibly complex biological (biochemical) systems of great sophistication and complexity is photosynthesis (derived and paraphrased from comments at https://uncommondescent.com/intelligent-...y-complex/ ):

In sum, photosynthesis is a process that converts sunlight into energy ultimately used by the cell with nearly 100% quantum efficiency. This critical biological process depends on some very elaborate and rapid chemistry involving a series of enormously large and complex molecules - a set of complex molecular systems all working together. The complex that accomplishes this feat requires 188 genes to construct. Molecular phylogenetics has produced no evidence of evolution, as you can produce 188 different trees of how it was produced.

There is no question about photosynthesis being irreducibly complex. It's finely tuned. Take away or significantly alter parts of this very complex mechanism and it stops working. But it’s worse than that from an evolutionary perspective. There are 17 enzymes alone involved in the synthesis of chlorophyll. Are we to believe that all intermediates had selective value? Not when some of them form triplet states that have the same effect as free radicals like O2. In addition if chlorophyll evolved before antenna proteins, whose function is to bind chlorophyll, then chlorophyll would be toxic to cells. Yet the binding function explains the selective value of antenna proteins. Why would such proteins evolve prior to chlorophyll and if they did not how would cells survive chlorophyll until they did?

Horizontal Gene Transfer (HGT), that is, co-option by the target organism of subsystems developed by other organisms, is supposed by evolutionary biologists to have made a major contribution to evolution of irreducibly complex systems like this - the only possible explanation besides design. There are fundamental problems however.

One problem with HGT is that it can never be demonstrated. It is just this magical event ("just-so story") that is proposed to have happened in the past where 188 genes came together, with slight modifications, to create an energy gathering mechanism of an astonishing 100% efficiency."

The biggest problem is that parts of a very complicated whole need to be fitted together. They must all have useful, selectable functions in their donor organisms. But wait a minute - they developed independently and are very unlikely to be compatible.

For example, if three societies independently developed technologies (or spelling/language for that matter) and then combined their resources, it would be very unlikely that there would be much compatibility between the groups.

The linear measures would be different. The nuts and bolts would have different threads and different diameters. The electrical equipment would have different voltages and if AC would work at different frequencies, to name but a few problems. This problem was early pointed out by Michael Behe, and in effect vastly extends the required time for the Darwinistic mechanism.

In the former case (the laws of physics), it seems that the only two options are design or a multiverse. In the latter case (biology), it seems the only two options are design or some sort of slow haphazard Darwinistic process. In the physics fine-tuning case, the multiverse hypothesis is untenable for many reasons especially because it is not science and therefore not even a hypothesis, being unobservable and unfalsifiable, in addition to just requiring a further level of fine tuning and so on.  In the biology fine-tuning case, analysis shows that the conventional Darwinian mechanism just doesn't have the ability to achieve such fine-tuning over anywhere near the required period of time indicated by the fossil record.

The bottom line is that the two examples are very different in nature, but both are certainly fine-tuning in the sense of systems that when examined in detail exhibit a very high level of optimization for their function. The alternatives to design are in both cases untenable for various different reasons, leaving design as most likely. The nature of the designers is a very different issue and probably can't be resolved at our level of knowledge and/or intelligence.