re: Darwin’s Doubt: the mathematical problem of evolution and DNA

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Mo Jeaux

Recycled intelligent design arguments.

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Not at all. Meyer isn't some nutbag hack - he is a scientist, deep from within the scientific community, who provides the math to back up his assertions that our existence simply cannot be by chance. I have been following Meyer's work for years and he is excellent IMHO.

Meyer doesn't even tell you WHAT to specifically believe, and he espouses no particular creed or religion - he simply lays out why it cannot be mere coincidence or chance. And thus, the only option viably left is intelligent design - and even so, he only provides a broad framework.

Maybe some here don't like that the OP interview is with Ben Shapiro - fair enough, Shapiro is not everyone's cup of tea. But there are plenty of other resources online and on youtube about Meyer's arguments that are not Shapiro-centric. I would suggest some background gathering not just on "Darwin's Doubt" but also "The Signature in the Cell".

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As I said, the Theory of Evolution is good at explaining microevolution, things like how the myriad of dog breeds came from the wolf for example.

But what it can’t do is explain how (supposedly) all life started from a single cell organism and though countless random mutations, became billions of individual species, ranging from single celled bacteria to human beings. That’s the whole point of the video I posted and the book he wrote. If the mutations are actually random, then the vast majority of these mutations would be pure genetic gibberish that leads to the breakdown of DNA and not the creation of a new and different life.

He uses the example of computer code, which is a series of 0s an 1s, and very similar to genetic coding. If you randomly change the sequence of these 0s and 1s, you’re going to destroy, not change, the code. It becomes gibberish. The odds of making random changes in code are incredibly small. Thus, considering the number of genetic mutations necessary to take a single cell organism and have it evolve into a complex life form like a human being would require an astronomical number of mutations that don’t destroy the genetic code but instead simply change it into something that is still workable but different.

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In my discussions with you, I’ve always found you to be reasonable and acting in good faith, so please take this in the same spirit. That said, I have to strongly disagree with all of this.

There are a few separate issues being blended together here, and that blending is what makes the argument feel stronger than it actually is.

First, the micro vs. macro distinction isn’t something evolutionary biology recognizes. It’s a rhetorical category used primarily by people arguing against evolution. Microevolution (small changes over generations) and what’s labeled macroevolution (large-scale divergence over long timescales) are driven by the exact same mechanisms: mutation, selection, drift, and time. There isn’t a known boundary where those processes suddenly stop working. Saying “micro works but macro doesn’t” is like saying erosion can shape pebbles but not canyons. The difference is scale and duration, not kind.

Second, the moment abiogenesis gets introduced, the discussion quietly leaves evolutionary theory altogether. Evolution does not attempt to explain how the first life arose; it explains how life diversifies once it exists. Whether life began via chemistry, divine action, or something else entirely has no bearing on whether populations change, branch, and specialize over time. Conflating abiogenesis with evolution is a category error, even though it’s a very common one in videos critiquing evolution.

Finally, the computer code analogy seriously misrepresents how genetics actually works. DNA isn’t a flat string of random bits where any change breaks the whole system. Most mutations are neutral, many are redundant, some are harmful, and a small fraction are beneficial depending on context. Genetic systems are robust, modular, and heavily buffered. Code written by humans is brittle because it’s optimized for precision, which is all the computers we’ve developed are capable of interpreting.

Biological systems evolved under constant noise and error and are optimized for survivability. Brute force is preferable to precision in gene propagation, where redundancy, tolerance, and selection over vast populations and timescales outperform fragile exactness. Random mutation doesn’t act alone anyway; selection filters relentlessly, preserving workable changes and discarding failures over immense spans of time.

Once those distinctions are clarified, the argument loses its force.

I get why the analogy sounds persuasive. I grew up steeped in these arguments. On the surface, it feels intuitive. But it’s built on assumptions about randomness, fragility, and probability that don’t actually apply to biology as we understand it. None of this requires rejecting faith, but it does require keeping these concepts separate and not attributing claims to evolutionary theory that it doesn’t make.