Evolutionists Are Now Saying That Evolution Created an Optimized Evolutionary Process

Evolutionists have always liked our immune system for its apparent Darwinian process of generating randomized antibodies and, through a feedback-selection process, amplifying those antibodies that successfully bind to the pathogens. Is it not an example of natural selection acting on random mutations—a proof-of-concept of Darwinian evolution before our very eyes? Such conclusions are another sign of the religious dogma that drives science. In fact our immune system not only operates in an infinitesimally smaller design space than would evolution, it performs its experiments astronomically faster than evolution ever could. Furthermore our immune system comes with a built-in, complex, feedback system that performs the selection. In other words, the selection is not natural as it is supposed to be in evolution. Also, there is that bugaboo that if evolution is true then it must have created our immune system. It would be yet another example of a hyper complex process that is somehow created by evolution, and is then enlisted as evidence for, or an example of, evolution itself. Not only that, but evolution would have created, as research continues to reveal, not only a hyper complex process but one that optimizes the production of those important antibodies.

Every calculus student knows that a mathematical description of a process can be optimized by finding the derivative and equating it with zero. But finding the derivative can be difficult, such as when the mathematical description includes integrals. This type of problem, known as the calculus of variations, is important in many engineering problems.

It also applies to our immune system. About ten years ago researchers used Pontryagin’s maximum principle—an important concept in engineering control theory involving the calculus of variations—to predict how our immune system works.

Our B cells produce antibodies but their division is more complicated than normal cell division. Rather than dividing to produce two identical daughter cells, B cell division is usually asymmetric as it produces two slightly different types of daughter cells. One of the daughter cells proceeds to produce antibodies but the other continues to adjust the antibody design. This approach optimizes the production of successful antibodies to fight off infections. Here is how one writer summarized this design:

Compared with symmetric division, in asymmetric division there is a tenfold increase in the number of antibodies produced. In addition, the cell that stays behind in the germinal center stores information regarding a successful antibody it has produced, and the optimization process thus concludes more quickly. "This kind of time-saving in antibody production can be a real life-saver in the case of a dangerous infection," explains Michael Meyer-Hermann.

This is another example of a hyper complex design that evolution’s random mutations must have luckily produced so that evolution’s natural selection could choose it and then evolution could proceed. It is difficult to overstate the absurdity of this howler. This is what happens when religious dogma drives science.