Self-Ordering Error, The

Evolutionist claims and concepts are generally employed in a deceptive manner. One of these misrepresentations is the deliberate confusion of the concepts of "ordered" and "organized."

To clarify this, imagine a long, straight stretch of sand along the seaside. The wind produces sand dunes large and small. This is an ordering process. Yet that same wind cannot make a sandcastle. If you see a sandcastle, you can be are sure that somebody has made it, because a castle is an organized system, possessing information organized in a specific form. It has been made by someone with advanced planning.

Complex and organized systems can never come about through natural processes. Even if simple ordering does occur from time to time, this never exceeds certain specific bounds.

Yet evolutionists say that self-ordering phenomena emerging spontaneously as a result of natural process are significant evidence of evolution and are examples of self-organization. (See The Self-Organization Nonsense.) They then suggest that living systems can come into being as a result of natural phenomena and chemical reactions.

But while ordered systems feature simple sequences and repeated structures, organized systems contain exceedingly complex and inter-related structures and processes. Consciousness, information and organization are essential for them to emerge. This important difference is described by the evolutionist scientist Jeffrey Wicken:

"Organized" systems are to be carefully distinguished from "ordered" systems. Neither kind of system is "random," but whereas ordered systems are generated according to simple algorithms and therefore lack complexity, organized systems must be assembled element by element according to an external "wiring diagram" with a high information content . . . Organization, then, is functional complexity and carries information. 217

In their book The Mystery of Life's Origin, the American scientists Thaxton, Bradley and Olsen clarify the issue:

The widespread recognition of the severe improbability that self-replicating organisms could have formed from purely random interactions has led to a great deal of speculation-speculation that some organizing principle must have been involved. In the company of many others, Crick has considered that the neo-Darwinian mechanism of natural selection might provide the answer. An entity capable of self-replication is necessary, however, before natural selection can operate. Only then could changes result via mutations and environmental pressures which might in turn bring about the dominance of entities with the greatest probabilities of survival and reproduction.

The weakest point in this explanation of life's origin is the great complexity of the initial entity which must form, apparently by random fluctuations, before natural selection can take over. 218

217. Jeffrey S. Wicken, "The Generation of Complexity in Evolution: A Thermodynamic and Information-Theoretical Discussion," Journal of Theoretical Biology, Vol. 77, April 1979, p. 349.
218. Charles B. Thaxton, Walter L. Bradley & Roger L. Olsen, The Mystery of Life's Origin: Reassessing Current Theories, 4th edition, Dallas; 1992, p. 146.