Let me give you a little background on me to help you understand why I am so fascinated with the complexity of life and cannot imagine the theory of evolution is true.
While I am not a biologist, I have dealt with a significant amount of life forms. I performed transportation and storm water design and interacted with permit agency biologists, landscape architects, and consulting biologists. My interaction with sea turtles, wetlands, endangered birds, urban forest, invasive species, tree canopy, etc. during design and permitting does not make me a biologist who can debate an evolutionary biologist, but I do appreciate the complexity of life.
I have performed project management duties and assisted and mentored some great project managers on a multitude of multi-million dollar projects. Reflecting on my duties as a project manager I have come to appreciate the level of effort it takes to make projects happen that few people can comprehend without explanation. I have lived by the project manager creed: Leave nothing to chance.
I enjoy watching the Science Channel and specifically enjoy the shows that go into the details of building things. These include: If We Built it Today, How It’s Made, Mysteries of the Abandoned, NASA’s Unexplained Files, Engineering Catastrophes, Mega Machines, Epic Engineering, just to name a few. Watching these give me an appreciation for what it takes to make large complex projects happen.
And lastly, I am fascinated by nature shows that go into details of wildlife. You have seen them on National Geographic channel and Discovery channel. I am overwhelmed with all of the specific design features of living creatures in areas of habitat, defenses, food, and reproduction.
All of this to say, that I am astonished by the complexity of life by way of my experience as a design engineer and a project manager. I am talking about the “behind the curtain” facts; the how and why questions I have about animals and plants.
Let me go through some observations and questions:
Life, in general, has amazing properties to live and reproduce. How did primordial soup know to do this?
- Green plants convert light energy to chemical energy.
- Plants take water, carbon-dioxide, ammonia, phosphorus, sulfur, and other simple chemicals and build starches, proteins, DNA and RNA.
- A living cell is so complex with it reproduction, mobilization, and energy processing system.
- Like the cell, each creature has a different reproduction, mobilization, energy absorption, and defense system to live and thrive.
The brain processes an amazing amount of information.
- It takes in 5 senses and processes it for you to respond from running in danger to playing a keyboard.
- For animals, the brain tells the gazelle calf to get up and run and the bear when to hibernate, the bird to fly south for winter, and the butterfly to cross the Gulf of Mexico.
- For humans, the brain processes emotions, thoughts, and memories. It ponders time space and matter. It processes math and logic. It can reason. It can ponder an infinite God.
- It has an extraordinary internal monitoring system that you pay no attention to. It breaths, waters the eyes, hunger pangs, thirst indicator, heart, hormones, etc.
- The brain has its own will and can ignore the senses when necessary.
The eye is like no optical system that man can create.
- The eye can distinguish among 7Million colors.
- The eye has an automatic focusing system and handles an astounding 1.5 Million messages simultaneously.
- The eye has a unique messaging system to the brain so that the brain can turn the image upside down and interpret the images with depth perception.
Symbiotic Relationship Animals can not live on their own.
- Mutualism – Both partners benefit. EX The plover flies into a crocodiles open mouth to feed on bits of decaying meat stuck in the croc’s teeth.
- Commensalism – Only one species benefits while the other is neither helped nor harmed. EX: Fish that attach to and hang around whales, sharks etc.
- Parasitism – One species (the parasite) gains while the other (host) suffers. EX: tick and mosquitoes.
Life Needs Other Life Support Systems to survive.
- Flowers need bees to spread their pollen.
- An oak tree seed need fertile soil rather than rocks.
- Many plants need animals to eat the fruit to spread the seeds (if you know what I mean).
Amazing design features.
- Metamorphosis of the frog
- Metamorphosis of the butterfly
- The Platypus
- The exceptional animal eating plants
In summary, I have the following two wonders about life that evolution cannot answer nor explain.
- I am amazed at the many design features in life. For humans to create to an operational system there has to be purpose, design, testing, construction, and burn in (where we make final adjustments, removing the bugs).
- I am amazed at the complexity of life. For a project (building a new species) to be completed, there has to be design, time, resources, a contractor, and project management to direct all of this to completion. Leave nothing to chance.
I was an evolutionist when I was younger and had not experienced reality. Now I realize what it takes to build something from nothing. Let me assure you, chance and natural selection do NOT have what it takes to create new species. How do I know this? Because I know the reality of what it takes to design and manage a project. I know reality.