Researchers Calculate Life Began Before Earth Could Have Existed

Geneticists applying principles governing mathematical complexity have calculated that molecules-to-man evolution involves such enormous increase in complexity, it couldn’t have happened in the 4.5 billion years conventionally assigned to the earth’s existence. The study by Richard Gordon and Alexei Sharov applies Moore’s law, an algorithm describing the growth of computer complexity, to evolution.

Moore’s law suggests that computer complexity, increasing at “a rate of double the transistors per circuit every two years,” grows at a mathematically exponential rate. Moore’s law seems to accurately describe the timeline of advances in computer technology.

Applying an algorithm describing the increase in computer complexity to the presumed increase in biological complexity necessary for molecules-to-man evolution, researchers calculate that life would have had to evolve nearly 10 billion years ago, before the conventionally assumed age of the earth. Image: Sharov, 2012 through phys.org

Gordon and Sharov propose that genetic complexity follows the same algorithm and requires 376 million years to double. They propose genetic complexity increased exponentially through “gene cooperation, duplication of genes with their subsequent specialization, and emergence of novel functional niches associated with existing genes.” At this rate, they calculate 5 billion years were required to attain bacterial complexity. Extrapolating backwards all the way to the abiogenesis of the first nucleotide, they calculate life took 9.7 billion years to reach its present state of complexity.

Geneticists do admit that it might be possible that Moore’s law doesn’t even apply to biological complexity.

While noting the many problems this scenario creates for conventional evolutionary thought, the geneticists do admit that it might be possible that Moore’s law doesn’t even apply to biological complexity. And since computers are clearly the product of intelligent design and molecules-to-man evolution—according to pure evolutionary dogma—is completely random, it would appear the “real” case for evolution should be even worse than they calculate.

In fact, none of the mechanisms mentioned through which genetic complexity could potentially increase are actually known to produce an increase in biological complexity. These are all proposed mechanisms, but in reality no random mechanism has ever been shown to actually increase the complexity of any kind of living organism so as to produce a new, more complex kind of organism. Thus, not only do calculations based on an intelligently designed system not apply to a random process, even the random mechanisms the writers propose are purely hypothetical.

More conventional ways of calculating how long ago life supposedly evolved resolve discrepancies between the fossil record and molecular clocks through circular reasoning. When the origin of life is extrapolated from these approaches, it is possible to arrive at agreeable figures so long as both methods depend on the same unverifiable assumptions and are calibrated accordingly. Be sure to read more about the way such assumptions provide the illusion of truth in “Ancient microfossils,” “Stone soup,” “Circular clocks,” and “Molecular time travel.”

It is doubtful that the inconsistencies addressed by this study will seriously affect any evolutionist’s thinking, given that the study itself is based on the inconsistent comparison of directed versus random processes. In reality, however, molecules-to-man evolution is based on circular reasoning, wishful thinking, and presumptive unobservable scientific claims. Biological observations tell us life only comes from life, and we never see even the “simplest” life forms come into existence through random processes. Yet the unfathomable complexity of living things is not a problem for the Creator of life, God, who created the world and all kinds of living things just 6,000 years ago.