Evolution and the Unintelligent Design of Life
Inherited Traits, Genetic Dysfunction and Artificial Life

https://www.humantruth.info/evolution.html

By Vexen Crabtree 2007

Evolution is directionless and blind. Features that evolve at one point can become a hindrance later on. Mutations and inefficiencies leads to dysfunctions and disease. This is about unintelligent design and the potential that the Human species has at lending a proper engineering hand to the whole haphazard process of selection.

1. The Ionians

#greece

2500 years ago there arose a society scattered across certain Greek islands that devoted itself to accurate study and produced the great Library of Alexandria. So long ago, they deduced from various observations that animals must have evolved from earlier animals:

“Anaximander of Miletus [was an early scientist from Ionia]. For ages men had used sticks to club and spear one another. Anaximander used one to measure time. He was the first person in Greece to make a sundial, a map of the known world and a celestial globe that showed the patterns of the constellations. [...] He argued that we are so helpless at birth that, if the first human infants had been put into the world on their own, they would immediately have died. From this Anaximander concluded that human beings arose from other animals with more self-reliant newborns: He proposed the spontaneous origin of life in mud, the first animals being fish covered with spines. Some descendants of these fishes eventually abandoned the water and moved to dry land, where they evolved into other animals [...]. He believed in an infinite number of worlds, all inhabited, and all subject to cycles of dissolution and regeneration. 'Nor', as Saint Augustine ruefully complained, 'did he, any more than Thales, attribute the cause of all this ceaseless activity to a divine mind.' [...]
He taught that there was once a much greater variety of living things on the Earth, but that many races of beings 'must have been unable to beget and continue their kind. For in the case of every species that exists, either craft or courage or speed has from the beginning of its existence protected and preserved it.' In this attempt to explain the lovely adaptation of organisms to their environments, Empedocles, like Anaximander and Democritus, clearly anticipated some aspects of Darwin's great idea of evolution by natural selection.”
"Cosmos" by Carl Sagan (1995)₁

I have already written on the demise of the Ionians, so I will leave you with a quotation:

“Such astounding wisdom backed up by studious thinking and experimentation could have launched the world into the modern era. But it didn't.
Rising superstition, the taking of slaves and the growth of monotheistic religion led to the demise of scientific enterprise. The culture changed. The last great scientist of Alexandria, Hypatia, was born in 370CE at a time when the "growing Christian Church was consolidating its power and attempting to eradicate pagan influence and culture". Cyril, the Archbishop of Alexandria, considered Hypatia to be a symbol of the learning and science which he considered to be pagan. "In the year 415, on her way to work she was set upon by a fanatical mob of Cyril's parishioners. They dragged her from her chariot, tore off her clothes, and, armed with abalone shells, flayed her flesh from her bones. Her remains were burned, her works obliterated, her name forgotten. Cyril was made a saint".
The last remains of the Alexandrian Library were destroyed not long after Hypatia's death. Nearly all the books and documents were completely destroyed. The Western Dark Ages had begun, and all knowledge and science was forgotten in the West for over a thousand years.”
"What is Science and the Scientific Method?: Ionia, 6th century" by Vexen Crabtree (2014)

Astronomers, mathematicians and chemists had to recover from the dark ages before the theory of evolution was once again worked (in much more detail) out by Darwin and his contemporaries.

2. Inherited Personality Traits₂

Much of the data on what personality traits are inherited comes from the studies of identical twins that were raised from birth in different families. This means that the genetic component of their development can be statistically examined, as their environments are different so similarities in character cannot be attributed to similarities in upbringing. Another method to improve this data is to balance the results according to the socio-economic group of the different parents. Large-scale studies have generally shown that in total, about 50% of the variation in personality is due to heredity₃. As part of this general trend, some traits are more inherited than others.

It is not only the standard personality traits that are partially inherited, but, distortions, dysfunctions and abnormal traits can be inherited too. Many are come primarily from shoddy genes. Attention Deficit Hyperactive Disorder is 'partially' inherited₃, panic disorders and schizophrenia are generally inherited, and bipolar disorder is strongly inherited (see the chart below).

Trait	Extent Inherited Genetically	Sources
Personality in general	50% inherited₄.
Leadership	60% inherited₅.
Shyness	Strongly linked to heredity₅.
Fears and phobias	Primarily inherited₅.
Panic disorder	Generally inherited₆.
Bipolar disorder	72% inherited₆.
Schizophrenia	Transmitted genetically₇.
Dyslexia	Strongly linked with 3 genes₈.
Autism Spectrum Disorders	90% inherited₉.

Aggression, neatness, social closeness, and intellectual achievement all depend mostly on upbringing (only 33 to 48 percent is contributed by inheritance)₅. After presenting information on the studies of alcoholism and drug abuse, Prof. Dean shows us that responses to alcohol and drugs are partially inherited:

“Physiological and biochemical responses to alcohol and drug use are at least in part inherited. A wide range of evidence, from adoption and twin studies to the identification of biological markers for responses to drug and alcohol use, have supported the findings that certain traits associated with use are inherited.”
"Chaos and Intoxication" by Alan Dean (1997)₁₀

Note that responses to the environment can be inherited. So, certain inheritable traits will only show up in certain life circumstances.

3. Mistakes of Evolution: Vestigial Features, Genetic Dysfunction and Extinctions ₁₁

#bioengineering #evolution #extinctions #science

4 billion species, up to 99% of all that have ever existed, are long extinct₁₂_,₁₃_,₁₄. Evolution has led almost all species into dead-ends, where they could not adapt to changing circumstances, or, they were forced to evolve into new forms, new species, in order to survive. No design of life has been good enough to survive changing circumstances unaltered.

All species are half-evolved: they have attributes that were once useful (vestigial features), new features that are inefficient or barely functional, and, all species suffer from genetic diseases that can doom them to suffering or early death. Countless imperfections from flightless birds to the battle between parasites and hosts reveal evolution to be a tangled web of trial and error, a chaotic mess, belying any idea that evolution 'knows' what it is doing. Improvements are ratcheted-in almost no quicker than they are made redundant by other factors; but the scale and repetition of attempted improvisions results in moments of brilliance, some of which endure, but most of which don't.

Problems with evolved traits of humanity are well-studied. We have vestigial features that are trivial - well-known ones such as goose bumps₁₅_,₁₆, wisdom teeth and male nipples are joined by the vomeronasal organ₁₆, Darwin's Point (that some people have on the top of their ears to control a non-existent ear flap)₁₆, the coccyx that serves only to cause us pain sometimes, and various blood vessels.₁₅_,₁₆. Other ones are nuisances: the appendix₁₆, the route of nerves across our spine that made sense when we cooped, but in a straight-back species cause multiple issues₁₇, and the wrong-turns of childbirth mean we birth our young problematically and somewhat too early₁₈.₁₉. Foetal development sees only half of all grown neurones used (the remainder are surplus and left to die during early neuroblast growth)₂₀. Many problems of old-age are a direct result of blind evolutions' inability to plan for the future₁₇_,₂₁_,₂₂.

Like other animals, we also suffer from a range of genetic diseases₂₃, running in families and throughout our populations, they cause deformation, early death and suffering.₂₁. Our capabilities to remedy some of these problems are improving, but, to smoothen out the rough edges of evolution will take intelligence, time, effort, and some cultural changes₂₄. A combination of directed intelligence and bioengineering will eventually allow us to fix some of the mistakes of evolution.

For more, see:

" Mistakes of Evolution: Vestigial Features, Genetic Dysfunction and Extinctions" by Vexen Crabtree (2025).

4. The Meaning of Human Genetic Problems

Genetic diseases are inherited or are made present from the moment of conception and do not result from any choice of lifestyle. Such random suffering is hardly the hallmark of a well-designed genetic system. Genetic diseases and undesirable personality traits afflict us because evolution is imperfect in its mechanism and blindly progresses down roads that can later turn out to be harmful. When it comes to random genetic mutations during our lives, our cells have had to evolve better and better ways of counteracting biochemical disturbances to DNA. In bacteria, such error-rectification was much less important due to the simplicity of single-cell life, and due to the very rapid lifecycle. Their error rate in their DNA is one in a million. We have developed better specialist enzymes that detect errors and our human rate is cut down to one in a billion₂₅. The only reason that these coping mechanisms are necessary is because the entire way DNA works is not 'well designed', but has merely bumbled along because it happens to work well-enough.

5. Continued and Accelerated Human Evolution

“100 000 years ago, cultural evolution became more important than biological.”

E. O. Wilson₂₆

The Human species has reached a unique evolutionary point, where our behaviour is so complex and intelligent that we understand the processes of evolution that resulted in our creation. We are still evolving; and although E. O. Wilson stated that cultural evolution is now more important than biological, sexual selection still has a powerful role in the continued evolution of humanity [Dawkins 1976]. This means that the driving force behind genetic evolution - who we decide to have children with - is still operating. Elements of sexual selection such as breast size, hip width and physical appearance are still providing evolutionary pressure on our genes. But, with increasing levels of cosmetic surgery and other tricks, E. O. Wilson may be right sometime in the future: through the manipulation of our appearance we might begin to overcome the (misguided) natural process of sexual selection. The best hope we have is that we will learn to manipulate our own genes ourselves, and therefore make wiser choices than the haphazard legacy of natural evolution so far.

The rate of DNA change has accelerated over the past 40,000 years, including areas of the genome that influence disease resistance, skin colour and hair follicles (which regulate sweat), "such findings imply that human populations are continuing to adapt to regional differences in sun exposure, foods, and pathogens"₂₇. The National Academy of Sciences published results that indicate that not only is Humanity still evolving, but that in the last 5000 years we have evolved faster than we ever have since we split from chimpanzees 6 million years ago₂₈. "They found that at least 7% of human genes have undergone recent evolution. The changes include lighter skin and blue eyes in northern Europe and partial resistance to diseases such as malaria among some African populations"₂₈, and, a lactose-tolerance gene is now widespread across Europe. In the future, the researchers think that evolutionary pressure will mean the spread of genes that allow mothers to start families later in life.

One of the causes of our accelerated evolution include, they say, is the surge in global population which allows more mutations to occur. The increase in travel and globalisation means that good mutations will move through the world population quicker, a process which the researchers say will also lead to a reduction in genetic differences between races, as African blacks, Chinese, Europeans, etc, have become less isolated populations.

6. Artificially Created Life and Natural Life Both Evolve (Spiegelman's Monster)₂₉

#futurism #genetics #health

The science of genetic engineering is very young. It became possible for us to clone and manipulate genes in the 1970s, and we have gotten very good at it. We can already permanently remove some horrible inherited diseases from family lines. A success in 2008 with Leber's congenital amaurosis, which is caused by a faulty (inherited) version of gene RPE65, came when scientists used a genetically engineered virus to fix a patient's genes₃₀. There is no reason to think that our competence will not continue to increase. With foresight and intelligence we can rectify more and more of the problems that unmonitored evolution has given us over hundreds of thousands of years: a process which has never before had the oversight of intelligent beings.

A famous experiment in the late 1960s used a small RNA virus named Q_B to provide proof-of-principle that artificially created life can evolve and converge with natural life: and both can be created from inorganic chemistry:

A virus is simply a strand of DNA or RNA encased in a protein coat. Although viruses store genetic information, they cannot replicate on their own. To do so they invade cells and hijack their reproductive apparatus, adapting it to make more viruses. [...] The Q_B virus doesn't need anything as complicated as a cell in order to replicate: a test tube full of suitable chemicals is enough. The experiment, conducted by Sol Spiegelman of the University of Illinois, consisted of introducing the viral RNA into a medium [... to] let it multiply. He then decanted some of that RNA intro yet another solution and so on, in a series of steps.
The effect of allowing unrestricted replication was that the RNA which multiplied fastest won out, and got passed on to the 'next generation' in the series. The decanting operation therefore replaced, in a highly accelerated way, the basic competitive process of Darwinian evolution [...].
Spiegelman's results were spectacular. As anticipated, copying errors occurred during replication. Relieved of the responsibility of working for a living and the need to manufacture protein coats, the spoon-fed RNA strands began to slim down, shedding parts of their genome that were no longer required [...]. Those RNA molecules that could replicate the fastest soon came to predominate for the simple reason that they out-multiplied the competition. After 74 generations, what started out as an RNA strand with 4500 nucleotide bases ended up as a dwarf genome with only 220 bases. This raw replicator with no frills attached could replicate very fast. It was dubbed Spiegelman's monster.”
"The Origin of Life" by Paul Davies (2003)₃₁

An even better experiment followed in 1974. Manfred Eigen and colleagues found that massive replication could be had by adding just one virus instead of a whole load of them. They experimented with the initial virus, artificially slimming it down to find out what the bare minimum was that they could insert in order to stimulate mass replication. They slimmed down what they added a great deal, and stumbled upon something absolutely stunning.

“Replicating strands of RNA were still produced when not a single molecule of viral RNA was added! [...] They were witnessing for the first time the spontaneous synthesis of RNA strands from their basic building blocks. Analysis revealed that under some experimental conditions the created RNA resembled Spiegelman's monster.”
"The Origin of Life" by Paul Davies (2003)₃₁

Summary

Spiegelman experimented on living things and obtained a virus called Spiegelman's monster by accelerating the process of evolution. Further experimenters produced practically the same simple virus from non-living matter.

Living and non-living matter can both create life, spontaneously, given the right ingredients.
Such life is subject to evolution.

Note that this was not obtained from the mix of chemicals that actually produced life as we know it; it is merely a proof-of-principle that evolving life can arise spontaneously from building blocks. In reality, the chemical make-up of life's first environment would have been different and occurred in a massively hotter environment.

7. Religion₃₂

#afghanistan #creationism #denmark #evolution #iceland #islam #nigeria #religion #saudi_arabia #science #sweden #turkey #USA

Religious groups have represented the most serious and prolonged opponents of the theory of evolution₃₃ and preach at great length against it, putting off many believers from researching the topic and leaving them only with misinformation₃₃. This is especially damaging in countries with poor public education. Many highly religious countries have banned it (not always completely), such as Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan, the United States, Nigeria, and Turkey, "to the point where a significant percentage of their populations are firmly against it without even knowing what it is"₃₄. In the developed world, the USA has the highest percent of creationists₃₅ and is also the only religious highly-developed country, whereas Iceland, Denmark and Sweden have the strongest belief in evolution, and are some of the least religious countries in the world₃₅_,₃₆_,₃₇. Schools in the Muslim countries of the Middle East are heavily biased against evolution, with understanding of science even amongst teachers being poor₃₈.

For more, see:

"Belief in the Theory of Evolution Versus Religious Faith" by Vexen Crabtree (2016).

8. Social Darwinism₃₉

It is not just religionists that hold dangerously strange beliefs about evolution, although some say that the policies which the Nazis developed with regards to race became religious. The biggest failure of this type of ideology is that it depends on the mistaken idea that evolution progresses with purpose, so that everything gets better over time. It takes the facts of the evolutionary struggle for survival (the survival of the fittest), and turns them from description into proscription. This is like a doctor, because he can diagnose a particular disease that occurs naturally, thinking that such a disease is therefore good.

Steve Stewart-Williams, a lecturer at the School of Psychology at Massey University in New Zealand, explains that Social Darwinists thought evolution always progressed and improved the species, therefore justifying some economic and political practices (such as the abolition of health care). "It is those conclusions that have unjustly tarnished evolutionary theory by association", he writes and explains that "as the environment changes, the criteria for goodness of design change with it. More important, selection favours any trait that increases the likelihood that the genes contributing to it will be copied, regardless of whether we consider it good or desirable in any sense"₄₀.

9. Artificial Evolution: Human Achievements Prove the Principles of Evolution

#egypt

If for half a dozen generations, no-one in the world had children with a blond mate, before long there would be no blond human beings. This is how strong the forces of sexual selection can be. If everyone in the world thought cats cute and bred the fluffiest, most child-like and domicile ones, Humans could create a whole new species. In fact, that is exactly how the Egyptians created the domesticated cat from the wild one. Nature did not produce our feline friends; we did. It took them hundreds of years to accomplish what nature does over tens and hundreds of thousands of years. How was it possible for Egyptians to turn wild cats into a new species of domestic cats? Because they commandeered natural selection for their own ends. The result is artificial selection. It is the same process that exists in nature, but with the intelligence and willpower of humankind behind the driving wheel, instead of blind mother nature. Carl Sagan furnishes us with more examples of artificial selection:

“Ten thousand years ago, there were no dairy cows or ferret hounds or large ears of corn. When we domesticated the ancestors of these plants and animals - sometimes creatures who looked quite different - we controlled their breeding. We made sure that certain varieties, having properties we consider desirable, preferentially reproduced. [...] Our corn, or maize, has been bred for ten thousand generations to be more tasty and nutritious than its scrawny ancestors; indeed, it is so changed that it cannot even reproduce without human intervention. [...]
In less than ten thousand years, domestication has increased the weight of wood grown by sheep from less than one kilogram of rough hairs to ten or twenty kilograms of uniform, fine down; or the volume of milk given by cattle during a lactation period from a few hundred to a million cubic centimetres. If artificial selection can make such major changes in so short a period of time, what must natural selection, working over billions of years, be capable of? [...] If humans can make new varieties of plants and animals, must not nature do so also? [...] The answer is all the beauty and diversity of the biological world. Evolution is a fact, not a theory.”
"Cosmos" by Carl Sagan (1995)₄₁

Our growing understanding of genetics results from our understanding of evolution. When we have mapped out genetic trees through history, tracing changes and predicting what fossils we have yet to find, we have frequently found those very intermediary species. Thousands of such missing links have been found₄₂, proving our knowledge of nearly every lineage. But all this knowledge is not just a bed-mate for paleontologists; our understanding of rapidly-evolving bacteria and viruses results in the development of new cures. Take SARS in 2002/3, for example. When several hundred people in China developed severe acute respiratory syndrome, genetic tests based on evolutionary theory led researchers in the right direction:

“The disease soon spread to Vietnam, Hong Kong, and Canada and led to hundreds of deaths. In March 2003, a team of researchers at the University of California, San Francisco, received samples of a virus isolated from the tissues of a SARS patient. Using a new technology known as a DNA microarray, the researchers compared the genetic material of the unknown virus with that of known viruses. Within 24 hours, they assigned the virus to a particular family based on its evolutionary relationship to other viruses -- a result confirmed by other researchers using different techniques. Immediately, work began on a blood test to identify people with the disease (so they could be quarantined), on treatments for the disease, and on vaccines to prevent infection with the virus.”
National Academy of Sciences and the Institute of Medicine (2008)₄₂

Fossil-record predictions and genetic kung-fu are two of the most exciting confirmations of evolutionary theory. Another is the record of what we have achieved so far. Our creation of cats, maize, the green carrot, cattle and sheep, and our deepening understanding of genetics is not to be feared. Nature has shown us how to combine genes to produce children; we have shown nature how much better, more nutritious, and safer, the animal and plant kingdom can be if only it is guided intelligently. Between nature and nurture, we have already created a genetically engineered world. We merely done it so slowly that no particular generation of humans was particularly shocked by the process.

Now things have changed.

“From factories and research laboratories to medical clinics, we are entering the era of directed human evolution. [...] For most of our history, we have been the passive subjects of change. In this new era we will take the direction of our evolution into our own hands.”

"Babies by Design: The Ethics of Genetic Choice"
Ronald M. Green (2007)₄₃

“Genetic evolution is about to become conscious and volitional, and usher in a new epoch in the history of life.”

"Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge"
E. O. Wilson (1998)₄₄

We used our minds to domesticate animals and produce plants with unnatural yields. The method we used was to control the spread of genes in the chosen species, continually improving it. In this millennium, the method is the same but our tools are being updated. Instead of manipulating the spread of genes through sexual selection, we can change them from inception using genetic engineering. We can take genes that produce Vitamin C from one plant and import them into another; we can eliminate hereditary disease through genetic screening. We have made the present, and we will make the future. To say that we shouldn't is to say that we should no longer have cats and dogs, nutritious corn, or wool. None of these things have heralded the end of the world, and neither will the things to come!

10. Conclusion: Unintelligent Design

Genetic diseases afflict not only mankind, but also all other animal species, and all other forms of life down to the simplest bacteria and harmless single-cell lifeforms floating in the oceans. In all these species and in plants there are seemingly endless cases of genetic flaws and problems. Perhaps the best indicator of how badly life is 'designed' is the stark reality that 99% of all species have gone extinct. The food chain requires that nearly every living being survives by killing other creatures to eat for food, and species naturally expand to use up all local resources, limiting the success of other species. Everywhere in nature, predator-and-prey chains are central to life. This isn't a design for life, but a design of strife and violence. The genetic defects of nature, and the violence and strife of the natural world, indicate that life was not designed by a good-natured creator god but maybe by an evil one. My favourite phrase to describe all of this waste and bad design is one I picked up from Paul Kurtz in the Skeptical Inquirer:

“The existence of vestigial organs in many species, including the human species, is hardly evidence for design; for they have no discernable function. And the extinction of millions of species on the planet is perhaps evidence for unintelligent design.”
Paul Kurtz (2006)₄₅

1. The Ionians

2. Inherited Personality Traits2

3. Mistakes of Evolution: Vestigial Features, Genetic Dysfunction and Extinctions 11