Complexity

The complexity of bacterium invites many to believe that it must have been designed.

I want to point out a couple of things that may help you along the road to knowing/believing otherwise. It is difficult to comprehend how bacterium evolved from simpler chemical structures. It is much easier to follow it changing, evolving further each day.

Millions upon millions of bacteria could land on a novel piece of fruit and find that fruit to be either indigestible or inhospitable. Millions of similar bacteria and millions of different types of bacteria. They all try. They all fail. For a while that is. Sometimes for thousands of years perhaps.

The bacteria evolve, they change a little and on balance of probability those changes make no difference. Until one day one single bacterium makes a change to its structure that defeats the inhospitable nature of the fruit and can to some degree digest enough for it to breed and multiply.

It only takes one out of billions of attempts. One out of billions of varieties of bacteria. A billion times a billion or more to succeed.

From one it doubles in number to two. From two to four, to eight, to millions in a matter of hours. From one to billions of children and grandchildren, enough to devour the entire fruit in a couple of days.

The reason why the intelligent creator theory is so popular lies not in the mystique but in our inability to conceptualise large numbers.

This is one hundred. Each one would represent ten million. Can you visualise that amount? I can’t, not really. Most can’t. However, some can appreciate the power of vast numbers trying.

You may have heard of the chessboard proposition. A man proposes that the king pays him by giving him one grain of rice today, two tomorrow and so on. Double each day until the chessboard is full. By day 14 the king has to part with a kilogram. By day thirty it rises to 8 million tonnes. Exponential growth. Another difficult thing to conceptualise fully.

And of course. The evolution does not stop there. The bacteria undergo further changes. To digest this fruit faster and adapt further to the inhospitality of it.