Darwin’s theory that we humans gradually evolved from some accidental form of life appearing long, long ago in some prehistoric “soup” is well known and accepted as gospel truth by many. He expected that subequent archeological discoveries would confirm his theory but the gaps and the missing links remain. Darwin himself knew what would cause the downfall of his theory:

If it could be demonstrated that any complex organ existed which could not possibly have been formed by numerous, successive slight modifications, my theory would absolutely break down.

— Charles Darwin from Origin of Species

Darwin also wrote:

To suppose that the eye with all its inimitable contrivances for adjusting the focus to different distances, for admitting different amounts of light, and for the correction of spherical and chromatic aberration, could have been formed by natural selection, seems, I freely confess, absurd in the highest degree.

Instead of trying to imagine how the human eye could have evolved step by step from some blind water-creature let us consider the “eye” on the tail of a peacock which is also quite wonderful and inexplicable, even to Darwin.  Technically known as an ocellus, it is a thing of awesome beauty, an intensely blue center surrounded by iridescent concentric colored circles, to be enjoyed many times over as the peacock raises and displays his plumage. It seems to have no purpose but to please the observer. Darwin called the peacock the most splendid of living birds.

He writes about the eye on the tail of the peacock:

That these ornaments should have been formed through the selection of many successive variations, not one of which was originally intended to produce the ball-and-socket effect, seems as incredible as that one of Raphael’s Madonnas should have been formed by the selection of chance daubs of paint made by a long succession of artists, not one of whom intended at first to draw the human figure.

Obviously, even Darwin had trouble in believing in his theory of natural selection!

Nevertheless, natural selection and sexual selection as described by Darwin MUST operate by chance. A brighter color or more beautiful design appears by happenstance, (or, as we would say today, by some quirk of a gene) and appeals to the peahen so that the more elegant peacock pleases her most and wins the opportunity to pass along his genes to the next generation. Darwin attributes to the peahen an apparent delight in beauty, which he also considers strange. Unlike the cock, the peahen remains drab, her coloring protecting her as she nests and cares for her young.

Consider again the eye on the tail of the peacock and the feather on which it is found. A feather consists of a central shaft with barbs on each side equipped with barbules which turn bear barbicels which interlock, velcro-fashion, with similar structures on the adjacent barb, producing a continuous vane. No person comes along and paints the ocellus on this plume after it has formed. No, each individual barb must “know how” to produce the right colors in the right place to achieve the overall ball-in-socket effect. It boggles the mind that there are those who would believe this marvelous arrangement of minutiae to produce an ocellus came about as the result of the random activity of atoms.

There is a PDF devoted to the evolution of feathers.   Obviously a feather must evolve before the beautiful  colorful eye can make its appearance on the feather.  In this little clip from the  PDF we read that the feather is said to have evolved but in the whole PDF there is not a clue as to HOW the feather evolved.  It is taken as fact that it just evolved.

Stage IV
The evolution of differentiated distal and proximal
barbules created the closed, pennaceous vane.
Terminally hooked pennulae on the distal barbules
evolved to attach to the simpler proximal barbules
of the adjacent barb to form the closed vane.  (Emphasis added)

Dropping the discussion of the evolution of eyes of any sort, consider the “evolution” of sexual reproduction which Darwin does not even attempt to explain.

This is what Wikipedia says:

“How sexual reproduction evolved and survived is an unsolved puzzle.”

I must give credit to the authors of Wikepedia for being up-front about the fact that there has not been any plausible explanation for the origin of sexual reproduction.  Apparently Darwin did not wonder about it.  Either it has not occurred to his followers  that they have no explanation for the beginning of sexual differentiation into male and female, or they are deliberately ignoring it.  They do, indeed, treat at length the advantages of sexual differentiation.

Evolutionists have many theories about the “‘why” of sexual differentiation.  They think reproducing sexually is costly in that time and energy have to be devoted to finding an suitable partner, there is a risk of remaining unmated, there is a risk of producing offspring less fit than themselves because of recombination. Other things being equal, asexual reproduction is quicker and easier.     On the other hand, sexual reproduction increases diversity and the likelihood of  survival in changing circumstances, it purges the species of damaging mutations, they are able to evolve new defenses against infections.  Some animals actually breed sexually and asexually at different times!

But as to  “how” sexual reproduction first came about there is nothing said.  In Why Have Sex?  The Population Genetics of Sex  and Recombination, (2006) Otto and Gerstein mention some of the reasons for sex listed in the previous paragraph.  But they offer no answer as to how it all got started.

Confronted with the fact that sexual differentiation actually does exist in most multicellular animals, we have to surmise that at some point throughout the millenia one of these creatures in the process of cell division just happened to  develop a cell with only half the usual complement of genetic material. We might call this a rudimentary egg (oocyte or ovum). Whatever could be the advantage of producing an egg? An egg would be of absolutely no use unless there was a sperm to fertilize it. If this animal found no mate, it would, of course, have been the first and last of its kind!

If we accept evolutionary theory we are required to imagine that each animal that today reproduces sexually,  was, in the distant past,  going about its business of reproducing asexually, dividing and budding away, then ALL OF A SUDDEN it accidentally produced an egg and at the same time, in the same locale, another animal of the same species just happened to make a sperm cell. Also, simultaneously and independently they each accidentally acquired the apparatus to get the egg and sperm together so they could produce offspring with a full set of genes.

Are you buying this?

If ever there was a case of “irreducible complexity” we have one in the transition from asexuality to sexuality.  (Irreducible complexity means simply that the process cannot be reduced to a series of simple steps one after another.  If a number of things do not happen and come together all at once, nothing works.)

Asexual reproduction is going to produce progeny identical to the parent, unless genetic accident occurs.    For an organism to initiate sexual reproduction there is required additional genetic information, not only added to one organism but simultaneously to two organisms of the same type, at the same time, but differing so that the changes will be complementary.  There is no point in having a genetically female animal if there is no matching male anywhere around.

Accidental genetic mutations are almost always deleterious and have never been shown to involve an increase in genetic information. Consider that the informational content of the DNA in a single human cell equals that of 30 volumes of the Encyclopedia Brittanica or 10,000 floppy discs. Where did all the new additional information required for sexual differentiation come from?

Like sexual coupling, the supposed evolution of mammary glands is another case in which two individuals have to come together at the same time:  the needy offspring and the parent able to supply that need.  In a rather humorous criticism of Darwin a Mr. Mivart asks: “Is it conceivable that the young of any animal was ever saved from destruction by accidentally sucking a drop of scarcely nutritious fluid from an accidentally hypertrophied cutaneous gland of its mother? And even if one was so, what chance was there of a perpetuation of such a variation?”  Darwin goes back to the baby kangaroo suckling in its pouch but does not deal with the beginning of this process.

s?

What about DNA?    What about those things we call instincts?  What would Darwin have said if the chemistry of heredity, now known as DNA, had been discovered in his lifetime?  If we did not know it was true, the fact that a package as small as the period at the end of this sentence could contain all the programming necessary for the life cycle of the butterfly we would find it unbelievable.  Consider the butterfly egg  (.)  That egg will become a caterpillar — which will eat and grow — which will make itself into a chrysalis.  Inside the chrysalis the caterpillar will dissolve and rearrange itself into a butterfly — which will emerge and fly and find another of  its species of the opposite sex and mate and, behold, more eggs!!!!   Awesome!

Consider the human sperm.  How does it know to swim upstream to find a human egg?  How does it “recognize” an egg?  How do the egg and sperm merge to create a new human entity which will traverse the fallopian tube until it nests in the lining of a uterus and goes about the business of making a baby?

The first big stumbling block in the theory of evolution, much discussed, is the source of the first living cell.  The likelihood that it put itself together (spontaneous generation) has been judged by Yale physicist Harold Morowitz, in the Origin of Cellular Life (1993) to be one chance in 10^{100,000,000,000}.  Francis Crick, Nobel prize winning co-discoverer of DNA, thought the possibility of life arising spontaneously in some super-soup so unlikely that he posited “interstellar spores” coming from outer space as the source of life on planet earth!

There are too many stumbling blocks before one can believe that the theory of evolution actually explains present day creatures!  No explanation for the first cell with its cell membrane,  its DNA, ability to assimilate and reproduce!   No explanation for the mammalian eye or the eye on the peacock’s tail!     No explanation for the shift from asexual reproduction to sexual reproduction.  Who has even attempted to explain why Darwin does not deal with this?

What did Darwin say?

If it could be demonstrated that any complex organ existed which could not possibly have been formed by numerous, successive slight modifications, my theory would absolutely break down.

— Charles Darwin from Origin of Species

I think Darwin’s theory just broke down.   All of the above are examples of programming — programming beyond understanding and almost beyond belief.   Programming requires intelligence.  It doesn’t just happen accidentally, by chance!

In the end, Darwin found the whole subject “too profound for the human intellect.”

I cannot anyhow be contented to view this wonderful universe, and especially the nature of man, and to conclude that everything is the result of brute force. I am inclined to look at everything as resulting from designed laws, with the details, whether good or bad, left to the working out of what we call chance. Not that this notion at all satisfies me. I feel most deeply that the whole subject is too profound for the human intellect. A dog might as well speculate on the mind of Newton. Let each man hope and believe what he can.

(emphasis added) — Charles Darwin

Letter to Asa Gray (22 May 1860). In Charles Darwin and Francis Darwin (ed.), Charles Darwin: His Life Told

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The mystery of the beginning of all things is insoluble by us; and I for one must be content to remain an agnostic.  —  Charles Darwin