Evolution Does Not Require Natural Selection

(Excerpt from Cellular Mind, pp 134-138)

Perhaps the most difficult mutation to explain involves worms placed in barium chloride solution.[i]  The solution dissolves the heads of the worms but does not kill the cells in the rest of the body.  Within five weeks new heads were regenerated that were able to survive in the barium chloride solution.  Genetic analysis of the regenerated worms found that 9 genes were changed during the development of barium chloride-resistant heads.

Tufts University Center for Regenerative & Developmental Biology

New cellular materials were required to evolve barium chloride resistant heads, and these materials were subsequently stored in the worm’s edited genome.  Using the 1.3% random beneficial random mutation rate discussed earlier, the odds of 9 beneficial gene mutations occurring by chance are 1 in 10¹⁷.  That these mutations occurred across multiple worm specimens lowers the random chance odds exponentially further.  Add the fact these mutations occurred within a few weeks renders the odds of occurring by chance to zero.

Modern evolution theory cannot explain how worms can evolve a barium chloride-resistant head in 5 weeks with an edited genome across multiple specimens.  This single experiment directly refutes the multiple pillars of the modern evolution synthesis:

1.       Miscopied DNA is not the sole driver of mutations

2.       Mutations are not always random and can be purposeful

3.       Evolution does not require eons of natural selection

So how did these worms evolve barium chloride-resistant heads and alter their DNA in 5 weeks?  CMT suggests the cells in the suddenly headless worms recognized that without a head there was no way to find and consume food and therefore the worm would die unless it found a way to build a head that could survive in the suddenly toxic environment.  The cells had the collective cognitive abilities to recognize their predicament and the collective survival agency to do something about it.  They experimented with different materials and structures until they found a design that could produce a head that could survive in the corrosive environment.  The cells then stored templates of the new proteins in their updated DNA to pass on to future generations.  There is no plausible explanation for this experiment within current evolution paradigms, hence it provides concrete evidence that evolutionary mutations are driven by a non-random, cognitive, survival-driven process.

Cell-Driven Evolution

Biologist Brian Ford discusses the shortfalls and explanatory gaps in our modern theory of evolution and highlights the central importance of the cell in driving evolution:

"The related disciplines of ecology and evolution pay little heed to the essential driver of development, the single living cell. We cannot comprehend the realities of population dynamics and evolutionary impetus without the cell being at the heart of our considerations…We search for increased resolution and greater magnification; however, the crucial contribution of the entire single living cell is conventionally overlooked. Our failure to elucidate the mechanisms underpinning the phenomenology of response in the living cell is seen as a failure to interpret the physics of metabolic and sensory processes, but life transcends physics. The responsive behavior of living cells and their ability to solve novel problems have not been resolved, and our standard model of physics is itself not up to the task. It is here posited that living organisms survive and proliferate through complex mechanisms inimical to conventional scientific analysis. To watch life at work it is the lower-power lens we need, not the high-resolution microscope”.[ii]

The evidence from the fossil record and modern biological experiments is clear: Mutations are driven by intelligent cells that intentionally alter their physical structures to adapt to changing environments.  Many biologists have made this argument, including Margulis⁸⁷, Miller[iii], Shapiro[iv], Lipton⁷⁷, Ford⁸³, and Bhaerman.[v]  The cognition and agency demonstrated by cells driving mutations and orchestrating the complex processes of life cannot be explained by our current scientific theories.  Something is missing from our theories to explain the behavior of living matter. 

Lynn Margulis was not only the first scientist to suggest that cells have minds, but she also was the first to suggest that cells drive evolution.  Her endosymbiosis theory suggested that symbiotic cell mergers can drive the evolution of new capabilities, new organs, and new species.[vi]  In her own words:

“In my description of the origin of the eukaryotic cell via bacterial cell merger, the components fused via symbiogenesis are already ‘conscious’ entities…Even remnants of "microbial mind" can be inferred from behaviors of thriving microorganisms. All of the eukaryotes, not just lichens or an animal's neurons, are products of symbiogenesis among formerly free-living bacteria, some highly motile. Eukaryotes have evolved by the inheritance of acquired genomes; they have gained all their new features by ingesting and not digesting whole bacterial cells with complete genomes.”[vii]

Here Margulis articulates a specific mechanism driving mutations involving “ingesting and not digesting” other organisms to gain new capabilities.  Rather than mechanically breaking down ingested cells into their molecular components, she suggests that some ingested cells are merged with the larger organism to capture useful skills, structures, and functions of ingested organisms.  New species can be the result of symbiotic mergers:

“Speciation has been traditionally considered to be a result of environmental selection on a sequence of randomly acquired, small genetic changes.  We suggest speciation often occurs by symbiosis, a discontinuous mechanism of large steps. In symbiotic speciation an entire functional genome and the associated protein synthesis system of one organism is acquired by another organism...We believe that symbioses rather than accumulation of random mutations may be a major mechanism in large-scale evolutionary change underlying the evolutionary appearance of some higher taxa.”

The scientific community has come around to Margulis’ views that eukaryotic cells evolved via the symbiotic merger of bacteria and archaea.  Some scientists have suggested that other organelles in the cell were also symbiotically merged into eukaryotic cells, enabling them to grow larger and more complex.  The eukaryotic cell is essentially an ecosystem of previously independently living microorganisms.  One can even view unfertilized egg cells as ingesting but not digesting sperm cells, symbiotically merging the DNA, organelles, biofields, and mind of the sperm and egg to create offspring that are hybrids of the parents.  Symbiotic cellular-scale mergers that enhance the collective survival odds of the merging organisms provides a far more compelling explanation for the appearance of new cell types, new organs, new features and functions, and new species than the obsolete view that they result from random DNA mutations filtered over eons by natural selection.

The bottom line is the scientific evidence strongly suggests cellular-scale cognition and survival agency, cellular mind, is the logical driver of evolutionary mutations.  Cell-driven evolution is therefore the Ockham’s Razor hypothesis for the evolution of complex multicellular life.

[i] Emmons-Bell M, Durant F, Tung A, Pietak A, Miller K, Kane A, Martyniuk CJ, Davidian D, Morokuma J, Levin M. Regenerative Adaptation to Electrochemical Perturbation in Planaria: A Molecular Analysis of Physiological Plasticity. iScience. 2019 Dec 20; 22:147-165.

[ii] Ford BJ. The cell as secret agent—autonomy and intelligence of the living cell: driving force of development. Academia Biology 2023

[iii] Miller, William B. Cognition-based evolution: Natural cellular engineering and the intelligent cell. CRC Press, 2023.

[iv] Shapiro, J.A., 2007. Bacteria are small but not stupid: cognition, natural genetic engineering and socio-bacteriology. Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences, 38(4), pp.807-819.

[v] Lipton, B.H. and Bhaerman, S., 2009. Spontaneous Evolution: Our positive future and a way to get there from here. Hay House, Inc.

[vi] Margulis L, Bermudes D. Symbiosis as a mechanism of evolution: status of cell symbiosis theory. Symbiosis. 1985; 1:101-24.

[vii] Margulis L. The conscious cell. Ann. N Y Acad. Sci. 2001; 929:55–70.