Among the most important questions in modern science are the following: the origin of matter and energy, the conversion of matter into energy and vice versa, and the laws governing these transformations. Some aspects of this we understand, while others remain unknown.
What do we know?
We know that matter can be converted into energy. Examples of this transformation include nuclear fusion and fission. In these processes, we manipulate matter composed of uranium, plutonium, or hydrogen. After manipulation, we obtain a smaller amount of matter, now composed of lead and helium, while the difference in mass between the input and output matter is released as energy.
In nuclear bombs, this manipulation is uncontrolled and sudden, resulting in a rapid and massive energy release. In nuclear power plants, however, the manipulation is controlled, and energy is released gradually, enabling us to convert it into electricity.1 This proves that matter is indeed interchangeable with energy; otherwise, it would not be possible to extract such vast amounts of energy solely from matter.2
Can we convert energy into matter?
This remains a significant challenge. Efforts are ongoing at the European atomic center in Zurich. The decades-long and multi-billion-dollar experiments aim to convert energy into material form. The hypothesized elementary particle produced through such experiments is the so-called “God particle” or boson—an elementary unit of matter derived from energy.3 Have we succeeded? In essence, no, though we claim otherwise. How was it attempted? By imparting enormous energy to “simple carriers of magnetism,” accelerating them within strong magnetic fields, and colliding them. During these collisions, a significant portion of energy was lost, and it is assumed this energy transformed into mass. The experiment is said to be successful, but in the author’s opinion, this remains uncertain.4 Why? The energy loss was extremely brief, and the “lost energy” behaved not as stable matter but more like a temporary dense energy that quickly dispersed.
Why does this matter?
Understanding this conversion process is crucial for explaining the origins of the universe itself. Furthermore, if we could transform energy into stable, elementary material particles, we might later combine them to create desired materials, including those not found in nature. This would fulfill the ancient dream of alchemists. The paradigm would shift: gold would become so abundant it would lose value, and humanity would claim it had entered the “divine space,” hence the name “God particle.”5
The fundamental question of life
Another critical scientific question concerns what we call life. How does lifeless matter and energy found in the universe give rise to living matter and energy? What defines “living matter and energy”? We consider matter and energy “alive” if they grow and increase in energy and material form, and at some point, produce a part of themselves that can replicate the same growth process.
Is rust formation on iron, which exhibits similar characteristics, a form of life? Surprisingly, this process does share elements of life. Iron, under favorable conditions, reacts with oxygen, extracting it from the environment along with existing energy, producing iron oxide (rust). This mirrors the paradigm of feeding. Oxygen is taken in competition with other processes also seeking it—this is the paradigm of competition. When rust accumulates sufficiently, pieces break off and begin the same process anew, acting as catalysts for further rust formation under similar conditions. This mirrors the paradigm of reproduction. Thus, rust formation exhibits all the paradigms of life. However, it is more accurate to describe such chemical processes as precursors to life. How many such “life precursors” exist in the universe? Nearly infinite. The root of life lies in the very nature of matter, with its tendencies toward attraction, repulsion, combination, and separation. These fundamental processes make the emergence of life inevitable. But how does this primitive “impulse for combination and separation” evolve into the complex forms of life we observe today, including ourselves? The answer is time—only time. The driving force behind evolution is competition.6
What does competition, the driving force of evolution, say?
Organisms with advantageous traits—those that more effectively acquire resources and reproduce—will eventually prevail. Darwin explained this process, though its principles have been known for centuries and reflected in proverbs across cultures.5 Despite its obviousness, classical evolutionary science focuses primarily on how natural selection favors better traits over weaker ones. While this is essential, true evolutionary scientists ask a more profound question:
How do new traits arise?
This is the core question of evolution, and neither Darwin nor contemporary evolutionists have fully answered it.7 The prevailing explanation—that new traits arise by chance—remains unsatisfying. Traits can be incredibly simple, connected to basic hereditary material. For instance, prions are the simplest form of organized organic matter. Their material participates in inheritance, growth, and division. A prion is a twisted, multi-folded organic molecule that splits into two identical molecules.8 Each new molecule has a “biochemical drive” to replicate itself using resources from its surroundings, essentially “stealing” material from the living host it occupies, ultimately destroying the host.
The Role of Randomness in the Evolution of Traits
A molecular change can occur purely by chance, driven by surrounding physical and chemical forces such as natural radiation, heat, cold, pressure from surrounding materials, pH changes, and so on. Considering that prions exist in billions within a small space and divide every few minutes to an hour, the probability increases that among this wealth of divisions, a random change might occur that enables faster growth and division. By the natural order of things, these new prions would occupy the living space, while the unchanged prions would gradually disappear, as the modified prions consume the resources necessary for growth and reproduction. Thus, a new subtype—so-called “advanced prions”—emerges at the expense of the previous population. This process results in prions with new properties, which arose purely by chance.
However, what happens if a single beneficial trait requires two independent changes that, on their own, mean nothing, but only acquire significance if they occur simultaneously or sequentially? In such a case, the statistical probability of a “random” advantageous trait decreases dramatically. Yet, even this remains plausible under the law of large numbers, as seen in the growth and division of prions, viruses, and single-celled organisms.
What happens if a new trait requires three, four, or even five random changes? The statistical probability of such an event further diminishes compared to a single random mutation. But even this is not entirely impossible. Why? Because, once again, the law of large numbers applies. Among billions upon billions of prions or viruses, in millions of organisms across the plant and animal kingdoms that divide every ten minutes, such “improbable” events can still occur. What if a trait requires twenty semi-dependent and twenty completely independent changes to the genetic material? At that point, the probability becomes so small that we can consider it virtually impossible. How can we illustrate this more vividly? With a lottery. Consider the odds of winning when you need to match twenty out of a hundred numbers simultaneously. For this reason, changes in genetic material through randomness are very simple, not complex. Simplicity is statistically plausible, but such simple changes usually have no meaningful impact on the fundamental genetic material. While minor improvements can occur, these “simple” changes, by themselves, cannot produce anything significantly different. For a fundamental change—what Darwin ambitiously called “On the Origin of Species”— much larger, more complex, and profound changes are required.
Why is this text so expansive on the subject? Why does the author dedicate so much space to explaining this? Could it not have been summarized in a few sentences? Perhaps—but the author will attempt to justify this expanded discussion by the end of the text.9
Significant, “respectable” traits that provide evolutionary advantages within a species—especially the large changes that create entirely new species—are multifactorially determined. A single random change means nothing, and even a large number of random changes means nothing except chaos in the genetic material. Mathematics proves this.
Thus, producing a serious inheritable trait that nature could select for requires a much more complex preparation, not randomness. Randomness alone cannot create it. Such traits demand dozens of changes in the genetic material—some occurring simultaneously, others sequentially. If we assume randomness produces this, the probability would be 1 in 10^30 (a fraction with thirty zeros), which essentially equates to impossibility.10
And yet, the undeniable fact remains: “the world evolves.” Things change, nature selects new traits within species, favoring those that are better adapted and suppressing those that are not. So where’s the catch? The question of creation arises: how do traits emerge? This is the central question of evolution—but it extends much further.
A Critique of Darwin
Darwin solved only the first part of “Darwinism”—he provided a clearer explanation of something all people intuitively understood before him: that nature favors the strong through a process of struggle. However, Darwin did not answer the second part of evolution: how do new traits emerge? Naturally, we cannot blame him, as the material basis and mechanisms of inheritance were unknown in his time.11
A Neurologist’s Perspective
You may ask why a neurologist is writing about this. What does a neurologist have to contribute to this subject? Will neurological knowledge be introduced here? You’re right—there will be an attempt to incorporate such insights.
Consider a specific trait offered to nature for selection: a mechanical feature of a marine crustacean living in exotic seas. This crustacean possesses a telescopic, pneumatically retractable limb that operates through a lever mechanism to drive a battering ram. The ram is composed of a combination of organic and inorganic materials with unparalleled strength and elasticity. We can hypothesize that achieving such strength, elasticity, and shape requires at least five precise genetic changes (arbitrary estimate).
The ram is compressed within the crustacean’s body and emerges upon receiving signals from sensory inputs. When triggered, it strikes with such speed and force that it can shatter the strongest shells of any marine animal, before retracting to its initial position. Experiments show that this force exceeds all previous expectations. The speed of deployment and the crustacean’s ability to maintain balance during the strike likely require an additional five genetic systems for control. Furthermore, processing external sensory information and converting it into actionable signals would necessitate at least five more genetic systems. This brings us to a total of fifteen genes or genetic systems controlling this feature (again, an arbitrary estimate).
For a crustacean without this ability to develop such a mechanical ram, most of these fifteen genetic changes would need to occur simultaneously. If a single gene responsible for an intermediate phase emerged randomly, it would be useless to the crustacean. Only the fully formed ram has utility. In fact, intermediate mutations—such as growths or hardenings in inappropriate areas—would likely be detrimental, as they would hinder movement, waste energy, and interfere with other bodily functions. Only the final, complete form would be favored by nature.
Thus, fifteen genetic changes would have to occur simultaneously within the lifespan of a single crustacean to produce this trait. The resulting offspring would possess the complete mechanical ram, which nature would favor. But what does this mean? Mathematics, or more precisely, statistics, tells us: this cannot happen randomly!
To compare, imagine we have an old cathode-ray television from fifty years ago and some discarded equipment stored on the tenth floor. We need a primitive radar. The television and discarded equipment contain almost all the parts necessary to build one. The probability that a radar will self-assemble if we throw the television and materials from the tenth floor is the same as the likelihood of fifteen genes randomly changing in a crustacean’s DNA to produce a mechanical ram. In other words: it is impossible.
The Call for a Creator
The explanation of how traits emerge “cries out” for some creator of traits. Randomness, as proposed to explain new traits in living organisms, is mathematically excluded. Modern evolutionists are increasingly aware of this fact. Thus, the question remains: how do new traits arise? The mechanisms offered thus far cannot fully answer this most crucial question of evolution.
A creator is sought. Moreover, why does a species in a particular environment develop a trait specifically suited to that environment? For instance, why doesn’t an elephant develop fish-like traits, or a fish lion-like traits, or a bacterium bird-like traits? Instead, species develop traits uniquely suited to their form and environment.
Who is the Creator of Traits?
To address this question, we must approach the matter from a direction opposite to the one typically offered in most evolutionary discussions. Instead of starting from random traits that arbitrarily emerge in living beings and are then sorted—or selected—by nature through the violence of survival, we will reverse the process. First, the need for a particular trait arises, and as this need forms, so too does the trait itself, gaining a selective advantage in the natural struggle. In other words, some organism somewhere develops an intent for a specific trait, “requests” that trait, and this forms the basis for its eventual emergence. This may sound somewhat utopian, but let us proceed further.
For an organism to know what it needs, it must first recognize or register the desired trait. This information must then be stored somewhere, but what happens next remains entirely unknown. Specifically, the mechanism by which information about a particular trait becomes hereditary—transformed into a genetic “reality” encoded for transmission to offspring—is still a mystery. Who or what is indispensable in this process? The nervous system. It is the organ responsible for gathering information from the environment via sensory input, converting it into information, and storing it. The nervous system alone, through mental activity based on stored information, can create new information and store it again. Stored information becomes part of an individual’s behavior. Repeated insistence on this behavior perfects the information.
On the other hand, learned behavior alters parts of the nervous system. But what is further required to complete this model? Firmly rooted information in the nervous system must somehow “find a way” to influence hereditary material, directing changes precisely where they are needed in the genome—not randomly, but deliberately. This occurs regardless of how many genetic positions need to be altered. How this happens is still unknown, but we can infer it through analogies to how the nervous system operates during the process of memory formation.
The creation model proposed by the author of this text rests on three assumptions:
- The organism must collect information about itself and its environment.
This is relatively understandable and well-documented. Organisms gather information about themselves and their surroundings through their sensory systems, as no organism exists without some form of sensory perception.
Take humans as an example: Humans possess two major types of sensory systems. The first type consists of general senses, whose receptors—sensors of physical phenomena—are distributed across the entire internal and external surfaces of the human body, as well as within the depth of its tissues. These senses include touch, pain, heat, cold, vibration, and the positional sense of body parts relative to one another. General senses constantly inform a person about their state of being in real time.
The second type consists of special senses, which are not dispersed across the body but are instead concentrated in specific locations in the head. These include the senses of sight, hearing, smell, taste, and balance. Special senses primarily provide information about the external environment but also contribute to self-awareness. Combined, the input from general and special senses ensures that humans are continuously and accurately informed about both themselves and their surroundings.
- Information obtained through these senses can be categorized into two types: raw information and constructed information.
Raw information is real, tangible, and true—a direct product of physical forces “captured” by the senses. Constructed information, on the other hand, arises from raw sensory data and previously stored information retrieved from memory. These constructed pieces of information are purely mental products, results of thinking, reasoning, or abstraction—a process referred to as “cognition” in Anglo-Saxon literature.
Both raw and constructed information are stored in the same way, through the process of memory formation. Memory occurs at the synaptic connections between nerve cells, and the essence of memory lies in strengthening the pathways through which information flows. Repetition plays a crucial role in this process.
- Stored information changes the nervous system.
How does this happen? Short-term memory relies on the existing biochemical capacities of synaptic material and does not alter the structure of the synapse. Instead, it “stretches” its current capabilities, leaving no significant trace.
If the same information is repeated over time, it triggers the release of specific chemicals at nerve endings, which restructure the synapse by increasing its capacity to process and store information. This results in intermediate-term memory. If the process continues with intense repetition, especially when reinforced by strong emotions, another phenomenon occurs: the release of “growth factors,” specialized chemicals that promote the formation of new synapses. This further strengthens the nervous pathway, leading to long-term memory.12
Thus, repeated effort to store the same information engages chemicals already present within nerve cells, restructuring the synapses and, by extension, the nerve cells themselves. This restructuring is key: Information stored in the nervous system can, at some point, alter the structure of the nerve cells through the action of specific growth factors. Based on this, it is justifiable to develop the model further.
By repeatedly reinforcing the same experience, even through long-term memory, another “significant chemical” is released (we don’t know exactly which one or how it works, but among the many proven chemicals in cells whose true roles remain unclear, surely one or more play this part). This chemical acts upon hereditary material, altering it. Such modified hereditary material eventually encodes a precursor or pre-form of that experience and behavior, passing it on to offspring. The inherited modified material represents a potential executive form, or soft inheritance.
If, over the next few generations, offspring with this “soft inheritance” repeatedly undergo the same experience—combined with the “memory” of a similar experience from previous generations—it gradually solidifies into hard hereditary material, forming a newly inherited trait.
The leading figure in understanding these processes in global science is Joseph Kandel, who established the foundations of this explanation through experiments as early as the late 1950s. Of course, the significance and far-reaching implications of his work remained largely overlooked for decades. When their importance was finally realized in the 1990s, Kandel was hurriedly awarded the Nobel Prize for his life’s work, albeit in his later years.13
Two more points are worth mentioning. First, the loss of certain traits occurs through a similar but reversed process. If a particular hard hereditary material is not emphasized in the life of an organism, it gradually softens, eventually reverting to soft hereditary material. If this trait continues to be unused and unreinforced, it can theoretically disappear altogether, becoming erased from the hereditary material, and thus no longer passed to descendants.
The foundation for understanding how traits arise lies in understanding the primary organ responsible for it: the nervous system. For organisms so primitive that they lack a formal nervous system, specific structures within their cells—or groups of cells—handle information. For simplicity, we might call these structures the precursors of the nervous system.
This model of trait creation, as outlined above, certainly requires thousands of years and countless generations. However, under this model, those millennia are not “wasted,” as they are under evolution theories based on “non-creative randomness.”
Is this perspective entirely new, and has anyone ever tried to consider the emergence of traits in this way?
It is not entirely new. Several authors before have attempted to explain traits and inheritance similarly, particularly before the revolutionary discovery of DNA as hereditary material by Watson and Crick.14 The two most notable—and controversial—figures who explored similar ideas were the Russian biogeneticist T. D. Lysenko and the pedagogue Anton Makarenko.
Both men entertained concepts and conducted experiments that loosely aligned with these ideas. However, this occurred in the early half of the 20th century, when much less was known. The only established scientific principles were Mendel’s laws of inheritance and Darwin’s theory of natural selection.15 Knowledge of how DNA functions to produce proteins and traits was nonexistent at the time.
Unfortunately, because Lysenko and Makarenko’s ideas became official policy in the USSR, their work collapsed along with the sociopolitical system that supported it. Lysenko primarily experimented with crops such as wheat, while Makarenko’s focus was far more ambitious: fostering “favorable inherited traits” in humans through child upbringing.16 Their experiments were manipulated and falsified under political pressure, rendering them failures. Today, their efforts are remembered as an epitome of pseudoscience. Darwin sought to establish himself as a great biologist, but his observations primarily impacted sociology, leading to social Darwinism and serving as a foundation for numerous conflicts.17 His seminal work, On the Origin of Species, is notable for how little of its content ultimately withstood scientific scrutiny.
Lysenko aspired to become a great biogeneticist but ended up an average biologist and pseudo-geneticist. Makarenko hoped to be a groundbreaking educator and socio-geneticist but became a dubious pedagogue and no socio-geneticist at all. Why? Because they started from incorrect premises. Ultimately, all three became what they did not intend to be.
Are there alternative models of evolution? Yes. Some materialist-oriented evolutionists search for evidence that life arrived on Earth via particles from space.
To ensure we err on the side of caution, we might say: There exists a universal principle, an eternal and indivisible rule of construction that governs all processes, from which everything emerges and into which everything resolves. This principle is not external to nature but immanent within it, unfolding through its own internal necessity. All phenomena, whether physical or biological, manifest as expressions of this underlying order, which operates through laws of organization, transformation, and continuity.18,19
What may appear to us today as miraculous or mystical is, in truth, a reflection of our current ignorance—gaps in our understanding of this universal order. As human knowledge expands, what once seemed like the realm of mystery reveals itself to be governed by laws and patterns consistent with this underlying principle. The history of science and philosophy attests to this: from the motions of celestial bodies to the mechanisms of evolution, humanity has repeatedly demystified the unknown, replacing superstition with comprehension.20
Thus, the formation of traits, the emergence of life, and the evolution of species are not products of random chance alone but reflect the inherent logic of a self-sustaining and self-regulating system. Each event, each adaptation, and each inheritance is a realization of the potential encoded within the universal order—an intricate, dynamic web where cause and effect seamlessly interweave, shaping reality through a process that is both lawful and creative.
This perspective allows us to reconcile seemingly opposing views: life is neither purely mechanistic nor guided by an external hand. Rather, it is the ceaseless unfolding of this all-encompassing principle, where even complexity and contingency find their place within a broader, unified totality. And as our understanding deepens, the boundaries of the miraculous continue to shrink, replaced by awe at the elegance and consistency of the universal laws that construct everything.