Covington writes:
“Point 2 - ‘The first lifeforms were vastly simpler than any life known today’ - is false”
I challenge Covington to find any leading origin-of-life researcher who agrees with his statement there.
Covington claims the first lifeform would have had “several of the biologic universals.” He doesn’t identify which ones (and origin-of-life researchers would likely not agree with him) — and he is already stretching credulity at “several”. Moreover, “several” already falls short of the many biologic universals contained in known lifeforms. In other words, Covington implies that lifeform biochemistry must have changed a lot. But this contradicts his other claim: “if all life is descended from one primordial organism then the structures performing these functions could not have changed much”.
ReMine writes, “Evolutionists possess no such knowledge negating the survivability of unknown lifeforms” (italics in original). Covington responds by claiming (without evidence) that the unknown lifeforms are “more primitive or less efficient forms of life” than modern lifeforms and could not survive today. But Covington cannot possibly know this about unknown lifeforms, nor can he scientifically test his claim. It is a bald, untestable, unscientific assertion.
Covington mounts a challenge to Message Theory: “If life is the product of one designer (and designed to reflect such), then why are the fish and the whale designed to swim differently? The fish moves its tail from side to side when swimming, but the whale moves its tail up and down, just as other land mammals move their bodies up and down through the water. … if whales and fish were designed by someone who wanted to show that he designed both of them, why not design the whale to swim as fish do?”
No one — not even Covington himself — claims fish and whales are compatible with separate designers acting independently, because fish and whales already contain plenty of evidence against that claim. So Covington’s point is moot. To communicate that fish and whales had the same designer, it is not necessary for their tails to be identical.
ReMine puts the point even stronger. He wrote:
“Remarkably, this message was even conveyed to low-tech civilizations. For example, the ancient Greeks had a pantheon of many gods, but they allowed that only one of them created life. They saw the unity of life displayed: within the embryos of diverse lifeforms; within life’s coherent patterns of theme and variation; and within the ability of diverse lifeforms to function together as a system of life. Although numerous ancient civilizations developed in isolation around the world, I am aware of none that attributed known lifeforms to the actions of multiple designers acting independently. Our modern biochemical-genetic laboratories now make this point indubitable, and falsify the notion that life came from various interstellar astronauts (or high-tech civilizations) acting independently. All life had but one designer.” (See here)
ReMine’s Message Theory addresses Covington’s issue at length. Message Theory claims life is designed to look like the product of one designer, and simultaneously to resist all macro-evolutionary explanations. For example, the up-down tail of whales (versus the side-to-side tail of fish) cannot be explained by common descent, nor by Atavism (or genetic throwback), nor by Transposition (such as lateral DNA transfer). [Note: Those are really three different ways evolutionists use to say a complex trait was simply "inherited".] So evolutionists are left with their least plausible explanation: the independent origin and “convergence” upon a similar design solution: a tail for swimming. Message Theory explains why so-called “convergence” patterns are abundant in life (and why Transposition and Atavism patterns are substantially minimal or absent in the fossil-bearing lifeforms). Put simply, if fish tails and whale tails had been identical, then evolutionists could (and likely would) claim it was the easy result of Transposition or Atavism. In reality, these tail designs are sufficiently different that evolutionists cannot claim these resulted from Transposition or Atavism, nor can they be explained by common descent. Instead evolutionists are left to explain it as an independent origin and so-called “convergence”. This same situation applies to the octopus eye (versus the human eye), and to the panda’s thumb (versus the human thumb), and to bat wings (versus bird wings) and countless other examples. In this way, evolutionists are left to explain the origin of sight more than forty separate times, and the origin of a complex eye — with a lens and retina — at least five separate times, as represented by eyes in: human, octopus, annelid worm, jellyfish, and a spider. Plus the origin of vertebrate flight several separate times (as in birds, bats, and pterodactyls), plus the origin of swimming tails several separate times (as in fish, whales, seals, and icthyosaurs). The very challenge raised by Covington is actually a strength of Message Theory, and a weakness of evolutionary theory. Message Theory neatly turns the tables on Covington’s challenge: Life looks like the product of one designer, while resisting macro-evolutionary explanations.
Covington read a brief essay on Message Theory and the biochemical unity of life, and chose to attack Message Theory without bothering to become familiar with it. This is very common. Therefore, for more on Message Theory, refer to ReMine’s book and essays.
