The One-half billion years (give or take a few years) of evolutionary evidence is missing!

The June 22, 2023 Nature magazine article “Lost World of Complex Life,” by Jochen J. Brocks, et al. [1] deserves special mention to our readership. The intense interest in all aspects of the appearance of “complex life” by the science community has brought to light compelling proof for the guidance and skill of a master builder (Proverbs 8:22‑31). Our loving Heavenly Father was the architect, and his son, the “Logos” (John 1:3), in full harmony with the other angelic host, took great delight in shaping our earth both as man’s home and as a Jehovah’s “footstool” (Isaiah 66:1).

In the way of background, even today most of the life on earth are single cell life‑forms such as bacteria that are too small to be seen by our eyes. We did not even know these organisms existed until the microscope was invented. These organisms (called Prokaryotes) have DNA dispersed throughout.

Cells are more complex than once supposed.

“Complex life” is built up of cells (called Eukaryotes) with a nucleus containing DNA. These cells contain numerous internal organelles called mitochondria. The mitochondria provide all the power to keep the cell alive. Interestingly, these mitochondria have their own special set of DNA. All living plants, animals, fungi, green algae, red algae, that comprise the “complex life” we actually can see, are Eukaryotes. The Lord oversaw the creation of these novel “complex life” forms in the seas long before the continents. For this reason it seems most reasonable to place their creation in the 2nd creative day. [2]

Over the last few decades, scientists who study life on earth have found that ancient sea floor muds, hardened into shales, hold the identifiable chemical remains from the cell walls of these simple organisms. For “complex life” a breakdown product of cholesterol is one of the many signatures that are teased out of the shale by ever more sophisticated analytical techniques. Brocks, et al. followed 7 chemicals exclusive to bacteria and 3 chemicals exclusive to plants and animals.

Here is where the issue emerges. While the shales from the 1st creative day into the 2nd creative day have a clear record of bacteria, there is no record of “complex life” until it explodes into the fossil record highly differentiated. This leaves the community puzzled as to how all this diversity could appear without leaving a chemical record. Brocks writes, “Current ecological hypotheses do not explain the apparent scarcity of aerobic [oxygen‑fueled] Eukaryotes over a time interval of more than half a billion years and across all environments where biomarkers are detectable, including apparently nutrient‑rich and oxygenated habitats.” Half a billion years is the time the scientific community believes that random evolution would require to reach the level of diversity found in the fossil chemical record. That is a lot of time.

While we can only applaud the clever investigation by Brocks and his team, we doubt that the obvious hypotheses that the half‑billion years of diversity found in complex life are in reality the deliberate work of an intelligent creator will be published in Nature anytime soon.

— Br. Richard Doctor

[1] Jochen J. Brocks, et al., “Lost World of Complex Life and the Late Rise of the Eukaryotic Crown,” Nature, Volume 618 (22 June 2023) page 767.

[2] Richard Doctor, “Jehovah’s Design is Not a ‘Lucky Fluke’ — The Second Creative Day,” Herald of Christ’s Kingdom (January 2020).

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