What’s Wrong With Trial and Error? Trial and error (in the world of non-living things) is the way many of the machines of our day came about in their earliest stages. However, while it is easy to “fix” a major error in a prototype machine, it simply cannot be done in a “prototype” living organism.

If you build a very large vehicle and put narrow tires on it, the vehicle would be very unstable in a turn. No big deal. All you have to do is put stronger tires on it and test it again. Trail and error could do OK in this case; expensive and wasteful, but OK. It is not alive and trying to survive. If you put a large engine in it, and a rear differential from a small car, the parts would break, and someone would decide to put heavier duty, stronger parts back there to withstand all the power from the engine. The “organism” could be repaired through intelligent use of mathematics and physics, and some very good design engineers.

Now, let’s look at a few requirements of a living organism. Let’s say, for instance you have a giraffes’ body, and it still needs legs. It needs long and very strong legs situated at the four “corners” of the main body mass (for balance), and oriented downward. Errors that produced only one leg, or even two or three would not work for proper locomotion. Two legs would require a different kind of feet, and would need to be located at the balance point of the body. Errors that placed the legs pointing anywhere but forward would be cumbersome for the animal. Errors that produced pairs of wrong lengths would keep him from walking properly. Legs that were not strong enough would break under the load of the giraffe. Errors that didn’t create proper control nerves from the brain to each leg would keep the animal from being able to walk. Errors that didn’t attach very strong muscles (by way of tendons) to the bones, with proper orientation and location, would leave him unable to stand up. Errors that could not produce proper joints, very strong cartilage, and lubricants for the legs would leave the giraffe unable to stand. Errors that had no nerve signals back to the brain would keep the creature from knowing if the parts actually responded to various commands. Errors which attached nerves back to the wrong area of the brain would send the creature into a state of sheer uncontrolled madness. Trial and error doesn’t work.

Let’s go to human anatomy for a moment. Suppose the heart actually came about by millions of fortunate mutations (it had the “appearance” of design). Millions of good trials placed the heart between the lungs (and there just happened to be enough room to put another organ inside this body); protected its’ movement from friction by covering it with a tough, lubricated “bag;” and hooked up all but one of the attached veins and arteries in the right location. The right side of the heart is pumping the used blood to the lungs by using one-way valves that just “happen” to be oriented properly for controlling backflow, and the lungs do what they are supposed to do, and the left side pumps the oxygenated blood to the body, with the same fortunate location and orientation of the valves, and the body receives all the oxygen and nutrients it needs, and the used blood is returning to the heart, and everything seems fine for about ten seconds. There is only one error to deal with. This creature is beginning to feel extreme pain. Death is imminent. Why? Because the heart is not pumping blood to itself! That’s only one error in untold millions of good trials (the heart actually picks up blood from a tap on the aorta). Has trial and error worked? 

Now, let’s just assume that the body appears to be complete and working. All two hundred and six of our bones are placed properly with the right joints, the right orientation, the right location, the right material, and all the joints complement each other in their connections, with proper lubrication between them, and tough membranes to withstand shock and pressure. Each muscle has tendons to attach to special areas of bone for the proper movement of that particular joint. The upper set of teeth are there, and match the lower set; skin actually covers the whole body and appears to be designed to fit properly over the hands (mirror images), and the seven holes in the head are just the right size and designed to fit the ears, nose and mouth. The eyes even have skin to move up and down over them, for lubrication and protection. Really lucky, wouldn’t you say? We won’t keep going, but I think you get the picture. Anyway, this creature is doing just fine. It does, however, have to consciously control its’ breathing. The cerebral cortex actually does temporarily override the autonomic system for that in our bodies whenever we wish to blow out a candle, or just hold our breath. Now we come to the problem. There is autonomic control for eyelids; for the heart; for digesting food and moving it through the body; other organ functions; chemical production, and so forth. So everything is fine until conscious breath control can’t continue. After all, this guy has to sleep! Oh well, so much for trial and error. It’s a shame. We almost had it, using millions of “good” trials and only one error.

Study human anatomy and picture it with any of these parts removed to see how things go. Remove a full covering of skin. Remove the blood-producing parts in the bone marrow. Remove muscles. Remove tendons that attach the muscles to the bones. Remove muscle control. Remove the skeleton. Remove the nervous system. Remove the lungs. Remove the balancing mechanism in the ears. Remove the lens attachments in the eyes, and just let the lens lie there at the bottom of the eye. Remove the brains’ ability to decode optic nerve signals from the eyes. Take away the muscle control for the tongue so that it can’t move food around properly to be chewed or swallowed. Remove the pancreas. Remove the hearts’ ability to pump nutrients to every organ in the body. Remove the bloods’ ability to absorb carbon dioxide at the organ site, and give it up when it gets back to the lungs. Or remove its’ ability to absorb oxygen in the lungs and give it up at the proper time when it later arrives at an organ. You really don’t even have to have an open mind to understand this. “Trial and error” simply doesn’t work.

Intelligent design and irreducible complexity definitely makes sense to me. By not being open to creationist thinking, the evolutionist has placed himself in a sort of “thought prison” in which he limits his capabilities to really understand the world around him. 
We all have a bit of intolerance and bigotry about us, but we must open our minds to alternative thoughts; then weigh the evidence using our intelligently designed brain.

Neither good science nor the fossil record supports “trial and error”. ~Harry Mooreore