Page 236 - The Errors the American National Academy of Sciences

The Errors of the American National Academy of Sciences

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pear within a few million years. If we consider that the most obvious
characteristic of structures with irreducible complexity is that they
consist of several components, then it can be seen just how impossible
it is for a gene to bring together the right components at exactly the

right time by duplication.
In fact, even evolutionists greet the claim that gene duplication
gave rise to evolution with suspicion. Lynch and Conery, for instance,
state that the mechanisms that allow gene duplication to contribute to
evolution are unclear:
However, it is unclear how duplicate genes successfully navigate an
evolutionary trajectory from an initial state of complete redun-
dancy, wherein one copy is likely to be expendable, to a stable situa-
tion in which both copies are maintained by natural selection. Nor is
it clear how often these events occur. 13

The impossibility of the mechanisms favored by the NAS as
gradually giving rise to evolution is evident. Moreover, the NAS au-
thors, who claim that the blood clotting process may have gradually
evolved by means of these mechanisms, need to prove these claims in
some detail. For example, they should address such questions as
"which genes underwent what kind of change, when, and how?," or

"what feature or function did this change bring about that was advan-
tageous to the organism, without causing collateral damage?" A dia-
gram of the blood clotting process can be seen in the figure on page
240. It is clear from this diagram that the chance mechanisms of evo-
lution cannot possibly answer the question of how such a system
came into being, and that evolutionist accounts are nothing more
than baseless demagogy.
Finally, the NAS booklet considers the irreducible complexity in

the structure of the eye. The error of logic made regarding hemoglobin is
repeated here, where it is suggested that the complex eye evolved from

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