A rarely discussed problem in the origins debate is that of reproduction. Reproductive processes come in several variants but the fact that there are variants at all challenges the standard explanation for evolution. In this article, we will briefly overview the types of reproduction that exist and discuss why each poses a challenge to evolutionary theory.
The first kind of reproduction known to science is referred to as asexual reproduction. It is called such because the organisms involved do not depend on meeting a member of the other gender, if genders exist in the species. Instead, they can produce identical, if smaller, copies of themselves. This may vary from budding, to fission. Asexual reproduction allows the less complex creatures in the world such as corals, hydras, starfish and others to reproduce without needing a second organism. In starfish case, they can even reproduce if cut apart so long as a piece of the central disk remains. Asexual reproduction supposedly evolved first, since it is found in the most simple creatures of this world. Even bacteria undergo a form of asexual reproduction. Since bacteria are supposedly ancestral to all life, asexual reproduction must have evolved prior to the evolution of sexual reproduction.
Sexual reproduction is the other of the two forms of reproduction. This form of reproduction requires two creatures of opposing genders to meet and exchange gametes. Gametes are the reproductive packets of information which must be passed between individuals in order for them to reproduce. Sometimes this fertilization takes place internally and sometimes it takes place externally. These fertilization events result in baby animals and even humans.
So why are these a problem? Why should evolution struggle with explaining either of these events. To understand this, we need to go back to the beginning of evolutionary dogma. Evolution believes that life appeared mysteriously in a primordial soup. Supposing this to be true, the evolutionists still have a problem. Why would a blind, random process as they presume evolution to be, design a method of reproduction? Suppose the first cell could have miraculously spawned in the primordial soup that supposedly covered the earth. That cell would not have produced any more cells unless it had the ability to reproduce. So where then did this ability come from? It must have been present in the first evolutionary cell. How and why did it get there?
The answers to those questions are bound up in the philosophy of evolution itself. Evolutionary philosophy assumes that life could form by random chance. It assumes that evolution is an unguided, purely natural process. They assume this because to do anything else would imply a need for a God, or some other higher power which evolution was specifically crafted to remove. That philosophical overview gives us an indirect answer to how the reproductive system of the first bacteria came into existence. Evolutionists simply assume the bacteria formed with all the parts it needed to reproduce. They have no other choice. If it formed without a method of reproduction, then there would be no descendants and evolution falls apart as a theory and as a philosophy. Thus the formation of a bacteria cell must have somehow also automatically formed a reproductive system as well. This is a tacit assumption behind evolutionary theory.
However, the assumption that bacteria formed with a reproductive system goes against evolutionary dogma. Evolution is a blind process. As a blind process, it does not think of the future. It merely works in the present. As such, it would never design or maintain a process which consumes the amount of energy reproduction does, while bringing no benefit to the organism itself. Evolutionary counters about passing on genetics assume that evolution actually has the ability to plan. No blind random process can plan. To admit evolution has the ability to plan, admits that it is not a random process and thus requires something or someone higher to guide it. If it does not have the ability to plan, then it cannot recognize the need to pass on genes, nor design a system to do so.
Even supposing that evolution could somehow design asexual reproduction for the first bacteria, other huge problems remain. Why, for example, are there several kinds of vastly different asexual reproduction? Why would a blind process waste energy on forming a new method of reproduction when the old one worked perfectly well? For that matter, why bother with the more complicated sexual reproduction at all? These questions demand answers. Evolutionists must explain why a blind random process favored creatures which must find another creature of like kind and opposite gender to mate and produce offspring. It must further explain how evolution miraculously produced two creatures of the same kind, but different genders at the same time, and in the same place. Evolution asks for a miracle, then presumes it happened.
Creation has no such problems. We believe that God created creatures to reproduce after their kind as Genesis 1 tells us. This belief eliminates all need to worry about the origin of reproduction since God made both forms of reproduction at the beginning. It is not a retreat from science. It merely explains something science cannot. This is the true beauty of belief in creation. Where the border of science fades, we enter the realm of philosophy and religion. Evolutionists, in desperately denying God, seek to blend the realm of science and the realm of religion by taking what they like from each. This is impossible and is something creation cannot and does not attempt. Reproduction is the realm of science. Why reproduction exists is the realm of religion. The two are tied together in a worldview, but are not the same. Where evolution fails as science and religion, is its blindness to the necessity of a higher power. Random chance cannot explain the existence, or variation in reproduction.
In His Image 