Top 10 Reasons Evolution is Wrong - Lori H. with comments added.
Educator and Art History Professor Lori Hutchinson, a reader of this blog, has sent me a guest post which begins below. She also presents a link to a site she owns that matches up people to post-graduate educational opportunities. Her ten reasons are all short statements which could all be individual blog posts but they are succinct and to the point. Lori Hutchinson ~
2. No Missing Links – If the species today evolved from other species millions of years ago, why aren’t we digging up fossils of all these missing links? Evolutionists will line up pictures of extinct ape skills and compare them to a human skull, but the gaps between each species are still too big.
3. Single Cell Complexity – Evolutionists believe that all life evolved from a single cell organism, which came about when molecules combined in a random way. Then the cell supposedly divided and ended up creating more sophisticated life forms. Yet scientists aren’t even sure how this occurred. No laboratory has ever been able to produce a single living cell.
4. The Human Reproductive System – We all know that a male and female each contribute one chromosome in the form of a sperm and an egg. This leads to the development of a baby in the mother’s womb. Although evolutionists claim that environmental factors change the chromosomes and cause small changes in the offspring, this is impossible. Environmental factors cannot change chromosomes in the ovaries or sperm cells.
5. DNA Repair – The DNA replication process includes an error-checking method and repair process to ensure it is performed correctly. Mutation does occur, but it is much rarer than evolutionists would have us believe.
6. Chaos from Organization – The Second Law of Thermodynamics expresses the universal principle of decay in nature. Chaos must come from organization, not the other way around as evolution suggests. God’s perfect creation has been moving toward chaos since the Fall of man.
7. Fixed Chromosome Count – All species have a fixed number of chromosomes that cannot be changed. This is why one species cannot mate with another. If an animal had one more or one less chromosome because of a mutation, it could not successfully mate. Scientists have mated lions and tigers in zoos to make “ligers,” but these animals are always sterile.
8. “Mitochondrial” Adam and Eve – Several different scientific studies have traced the DNA of the human race back to a single man and woman who lived about 6000 years ago. According to evolutionists, humans gradually evolved from monkeys. Yet the DNA the scientists have discovered hasn’t changed for over 6000 years.
9. The Cambrian Explosion – The deepest fossil layers contain simple bacteria, yet right about these layers is what’s known as the “Cambrian Explosion” – a fantastic variety of species, including vertebrates. Where’s the missing link between the bacteria and all those species?
10. The Human Race – The Bible tells us that God created man in His image. No other species even comes close to being as intelligent and sophisticated as we are. If we evolved from monkeys, shouldn’t there be species that come close to our level of intelligence?
Top 10 Reasons Evolution is Wrong
1. Birds – When you really think about the idea of natural selection and apply it to certain species, it doesn’t always make sense. For example, why would birds evolve wings if they didn’t need to fly before? What use were wings before they were big enough to get the bird off the ground? Until wings evolved completely, they would be useless, and so why did birds supposedly spend millions of generations evolving a useful wing?
2. No Missing Links – If the species today evolved from other species millions of years ago, why aren’t we digging up fossils of all these missing links? Evolutionists will line up pictures of extinct ape skills and compare them to a human skull, but the gaps between each species are still too big.
3. Single Cell Complexity – Evolutionists believe that all life evolved from a single cell organism, which came about when molecules combined in a random way. Then the cell supposedly divided and ended up creating more sophisticated life forms. Yet scientists aren’t even sure how this occurred. No laboratory has ever been able to produce a single living cell.
4. The Human Reproductive System – We all know that a male and female each contribute one chromosome in the form of a sperm and an egg. This leads to the development of a baby in the mother’s womb. Although evolutionists claim that environmental factors change the chromosomes and cause small changes in the offspring, this is impossible. Environmental factors cannot change chromosomes in the ovaries or sperm cells.
5. DNA Repair – The DNA replication process includes an error-checking method and repair process to ensure it is performed correctly. Mutation does occur, but it is much rarer than evolutionists would have us believe.
6. Chaos from Organization – The Second Law of Thermodynamics expresses the universal principle of decay in nature. Chaos must come from organization, not the other way around as evolution suggests. God’s perfect creation has been moving toward chaos since the Fall of man.
7. Fixed Chromosome Count – All species have a fixed number of chromosomes that cannot be changed. This is why one species cannot mate with another. If an animal had one more or one less chromosome because of a mutation, it could not successfully mate. Scientists have mated lions and tigers in zoos to make “ligers,” but these animals are always sterile.
8. “Mitochondrial” Adam and Eve – Several different scientific studies have traced the DNA of the human race back to a single man and woman who lived about 6000 years ago. According to evolutionists, humans gradually evolved from monkeys. Yet the DNA the scientists have discovered hasn’t changed for over 6000 years.
9. The Cambrian Explosion – The deepest fossil layers contain simple bacteria, yet right about these layers is what’s known as the “Cambrian Explosion” – a fantastic variety of species, including vertebrates. Where’s the missing link between the bacteria and all those species?
10. The Human Race – The Bible tells us that God created man in His image. No other species even comes close to being as intelligent and sophisticated as we are. If we evolved from monkeys, shouldn’t there be species that come close to our level of intelligence?
This article was submitted by Lori Hutchison. She owns the site Masters in History Guide and is an Art History Professor.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Lori makes some good points. There are more than ten good reasons why evolution is wrong. In general, Occam's Razor is ignored because evolution is never the best explanation for any of the recent findings in science about life, about the makeup of the elements, about the objects observed in space, about dating methods, about the cell, about variations within organisms, about the surface features of the Earth, about the composition of the atmosphere, about the fossil layers, you name it, Darwinists have a convoluted story about it which is not by common sense nearly as reasonable as Creation by God.
Let us elaborate on one of Lori's points, Point 5 - DNA Repair.
I remember when all GM cars had a little nameplate on the frame at the bottom of the driver's door opening that would proclaim "body by Fisher" and to this day, all cars have an ID tag usually on the dashboard near the junction of dash and windshield and also a tag on the inside of the driver's door where the door would meet the frame. These tags identify the car so that one could know when it was assembled and at what factory. Many of the components of the automobile will also have a number stamped on them. Most automobiles driven in America were assembled here, even those with foreign names like Toyota and Subaru. Some come from overseas and quite a few are assembled in Mexico.
Body by Fisher
By the way, when our automobile parts plant had a "run" of Ford parts that were sub-standard but still usable, they were selected to ship to Mexico, where many of the Fords were made, often for shipment overseas but some would come back to the USA. Everyone knew the Mexican plant had a reputation for poor workmanship and standards, so we could ship the parts there and get paid rather than having to try to recycle them and take what we could to blend with raw materials and get something out of them. So if you are buying a Ford, check the serial number and use the internet to discover if it was assembled in the USA or Mexico. If Mexico, just walk away, the automobile is probably going to be a lemon.
Lori's point five, DNA repair, is quite important. You see, in the 1980's the automobile industry in America felt a virtual earthquake of realization as they finally began to understand why foreign makers like Toyota and Honda and Subaru and Volkswagen were kicking their butts. American automakers still used old-fashioned quality control methods, in which now and again a random part was taken from the assembly line and checked against the specifications. Quality Process Control had been taught by American engineers to the Japanese to help them rebuild their businesses after WWII. But American industry had for the most part ignored the concept. By the 1980's we had pitiful examples such as the Chrysler "K-body" cars that were unreliable, ugly hunks of soon-to-be-junk. Bad engineering, careless quality control and an arrogant belief in the superiority of products simply because of the "Made in America" tag had become the norm.
In the Automobile industry in this country, the automakers implemented Quality Process Systems (aka Controls or Assurance) and Kaizen (basically a means of continuous improvement in methods and results) and required compliance with ISO 9001/2/3 and above standards by means of internal and external audits. Assembly lines were now being sampled by specific methods designed to assure a consistent result and proactive controls were put in place so that each auto supplier had quality process controls in place from raw materials all the way to the assembly plants themselves (in the USA). The results were manifold. US-built automobiles regained their reputations as well-built, there were more management ears listening to the engineers and the industry was shaken and suffered losses but it survived. Had the automobile unions been willing to make some concessions the US would have likely seen a resurgence in domestic auto sales and growth rather than loss of market share. But while the automakers could improve their products, bad union contracts made the cost of labor tremendously higher for Detroit and therefore it was and still is hard for them to compete.
I was a certified ISO auditor once myself...
No matter, the point is that organisms had quality process controls built into them and we did not even know this until recently. This knowledge alone should have clued Darwinists into the idea that cells are designed. QPS as we called it in the auto industry is not something that one can imagine evolving, as it is sets of controls placed upon a system from outside the system itself. It is a management tool that involves auditing and testing against standards and yet organisms have been apparently doing this from the beginning while mankind did not even begin using assembly lines until the 19th Century when Samuel Colt began using the concept in rudimentary form for producing weapons and then, famously, Henry Ford applied them on a bigger scale to produce his automobiles. Decades later QPS (also called QPC, QPA and QP depending on the source) would be imposed on manufacturing systems to ensure standardized results.
Organisms have been using assembly line concepts and QPS in order to reproduce. Organisms have meta-information in the cells that are the assembly instructions for the child(ren) of the organism, and this meta-information is part of the system that assures that the same kind of organism will result. DNA has continuous repair systems in place, seeking to eliminate mutations of any kind. Algorithms that are often beyond human understanding are entered into the organism during reproduction as information is passed from generation to generation but not by teaching but rather as part of the reproductive process. The framework for the child is laid by the mother, assuring that the same kind of organism will result. Some inbuilt switches allow for certain features to be quickly changed, such as the beaks of finches. Ironic that finch beaks actually can vary quite a bit and change rapidly to adapt to conditions but this is a process inbuilt into the organism using genetic code already available for use.
Darwinists have no explanation for the rich genetic code within DNA, let alone DNA itself. They have no explanation for switching, for quality process control, for meta-information or for algorithms that are inbuilt. All of these features are design features. They are all evidence that the organisms were designed and built to be able to reproduce while having an abundance of choices within the gene pool to conserve the kind while adjusting to variations in ecosystems. "Junk" DNA turns out to be not only functional but necessary as scientists learn more about how DNA actually works and discover more and more complexity and design and information within cells of all kinds. "Vestigal" organs turn out to have uses. ERVs turn out to be highly functional rather than being leftovers from the past. In fact, the variation within kind has been revealed to be just what Edward Blyth thought it was, the selection of features available to the organism is simply part of the design of the organism. God turns out to be a great engineer.
Organisms are not evolving, they are devolving. Mankind is accumulating mutations despite the QPS processes built in to DNA. No doubt science will discover that mutations are accumulating within most populations. Despite the Darwinist myth that mutations are the drivers for the evolution of organisms, the fact is that it goes in the other direction. Mutations are the enemy of the organism, not the builder. You should be able to see this logically. There are companies that build automobiles. We call them manufacturers. There are also companies that take automobiles and strip them for parts and then crunch the remains into small metal cubes. We call them junk yards or wreckers.
Consider your home. I will use mine as an example. We purchased land, approved a blueprint for the design of the home with some variations to the standard according to our personal preferences. Various crews produced the foundation, built the house from scratch using lumber and nails and drywall and brick and mortar and so on. That crew also built the back deck. Other crews put in the wiring and plumbing. Yet another crew put in the doors and painted the walls and put on the trim. Meanwhile a crew installed the siding and roofing and soffits and gutters. One of the crews put in the windows and overhead lights and ceiling fans. A crew poured the floor of the garage, put in the driveway and the sidewalks and the front porch. We then ourselves got the sod laid for the lawn, built the dog run and put in the gravel, added trees and shrubs and gardens in front and back for decorative purposes, plus a garden in back for things like peppers and tomatoes. We had a shed built in back. With all of this, it took raw materials and design and intention and effort to build a house.
How about number 6, Chaos from Organization?
When a house is ready to be demolished, a wrecking crew comes in to perhaps take anything that appears to be of value, then knock the house down to the ground and smash it into small enough pieces to be thrown away in a big dumpster. They may separate out pipe and wiring from the rubble of wood and insulation and other junk. For the most part the house is converted to junk and hauled away to the dump. A wrecking crew tears things down and breaks things up and turns a house into a couple of dumpster loads of trash destined for the dump, where the remains will continue to be broken down by the elements and any organisms that may feed on what is left. The Second Law of Thermodynamics works on finishing the job.
building turning to rubble in Cairo, IL
If a house is left alone and not maintained, it will tear itself down. Over time the paint wears away and the roof begins to degrade. Eventually a storm will rip off a section of rotting roof and the ravages of nature get access to the interior. Likely any windows will be vulnerable to the rock-throwing bored teenagers of the neighborhood and the weather. The gutters will fill with junk and fall off. If there is siding rather than paint it will begin to rip off from age and weathering. After a few years the house will become so ugly and ravaged the neighborhood kids will declare that it is "haunted" and a few will dare to break in and spray paint their initials on the walls and perhaps break a few things. It may be that drug users will inhabit the place to use as a refuge from the outside where they can shoot themselves up and then lay around dazed from the fix. It may be that kids will choose it as a party house and go there to drink beer and wine and other things they could not do at home. Inevitably the day will come when the work of vandals and age and weather will cause the roof to cave in and the house to being to lean to one side and finally it will be overcome by nature. Soon it will be an abandoned property with weeds and brush and trees beginning to take over the spot a house once covered. Moss will thrive where the roof once was, small animals will take shelter in the wreckage, over time the casual observer may have difficulty even seeing any sign that a house was ever there without investigation.
Another Cairo building going, going, almost gone
Darwinists credit the wreckers and the ravages of time for being the builders of organisms. They tell stories about how this took place, but in real life we never see it happening. When we see mutations change an organism, it is always because of information copying or information loss. No matter how many square miles of verbiage they throw at you, real science sees design and information in organisms and no natural source of either in the material world. Intelligence produces information and intelligence produces design. Random mutations break things. In a nutshell, this is why Darwinism is a myth rather than science. It cannot give us a naturalistic source for information or design, it cannot account for life, and it certainly has the direction of Thermodynamics reversed. Organized things are becoming disorganized. Energy is being converted to entropy. Blowing things up doesn't build them and leaving them out in the elements doesn't build them. Logic! Science!
house giving in to 2LOT in Cairo, IL
At one time, between the time of the War of 1812 and around the time of the Civil War some folks proposed that Cairo, Illinois become the US Capitol. Being right at the confluence of the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers, the tail of Illinois was going to be close to the center of the nation once completely expanded to the Pacific. With waterways being of utmost importance at the time, it was a reasonable idea. Of course it never happened. Now Cairo is a backwater that is literally falling apart. There are collapsed, abandoned houses all over, streets in need of repair, rusty cars and empty lots. The energy of the Sun has been shining on Cairo all this time, but undirected energy will never build things.
A once-proud hotel empty and still standing in Cairo
The once-possible center of government of the USA is now a monument to the Laws of Thermodynamics. Natural things go from energy to entropy, from order to disorder. Only directed energy with intentionality can make things in spite of the LOT. Mankind has to work hard to offset the continual process of order to disorder. There are no new businesses coming to Cairo to save it. There is not enough tax money to fix the streets, there are not enough investors to salvage and reopen abandoned businesses, there are not developers seeking to tear down old houses and build a new subdivision, there are just a few businesses hanging on, farmers farming, some shipping and a few small manufacturers keeping the place from disappearing from the map. You can go back and forth from Illinois to Kentucky and then from Illinois to Missouri by means of the two bridges that cross the Ohio and Mississippi before they come together and wear one name. At that point you have done the most interesting thing one can do in Cairo, Illinois. Unless, of course, your name is Cairo Water Co. and you are looking for a missing check?
So who is exactly $22.66 short on your accounts?
Cairo makes me think of Darwinism. It was once considered foundational, just like Cairo was considered as our nation's Capitol. But it is all falling apart.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Lori makes some good points. There are more than ten good reasons why evolution is wrong. In general, Occam's Razor is ignored because evolution is never the best explanation for any of the recent findings in science about life, about the makeup of the elements, about the objects observed in space, about dating methods, about the cell, about variations within organisms, about the surface features of the Earth, about the composition of the atmosphere, about the fossil layers, you name it, Darwinists have a convoluted story about it which is not by common sense nearly as reasonable as Creation by God.
Let us elaborate on one of Lori's points, Point 5 - DNA Repair.
I remember when all GM cars had a little nameplate on the frame at the bottom of the driver's door opening that would proclaim "body by Fisher" and to this day, all cars have an ID tag usually on the dashboard near the junction of dash and windshield and also a tag on the inside of the driver's door where the door would meet the frame. These tags identify the car so that one could know when it was assembled and at what factory. Many of the components of the automobile will also have a number stamped on them. Most automobiles driven in America were assembled here, even those with foreign names like Toyota and Subaru. Some come from overseas and quite a few are assembled in Mexico.
By the way, when our automobile parts plant had a "run" of Ford parts that were sub-standard but still usable, they were selected to ship to Mexico, where many of the Fords were made, often for shipment overseas but some would come back to the USA. Everyone knew the Mexican plant had a reputation for poor workmanship and standards, so we could ship the parts there and get paid rather than having to try to recycle them and take what we could to blend with raw materials and get something out of them. So if you are buying a Ford, check the serial number and use the internet to discover if it was assembled in the USA or Mexico. If Mexico, just walk away, the automobile is probably going to be a lemon.
Lori's point five, DNA repair, is quite important. You see, in the 1980's the automobile industry in America felt a virtual earthquake of realization as they finally began to understand why foreign makers like Toyota and Honda and Subaru and Volkswagen were kicking their butts. American automakers still used old-fashioned quality control methods, in which now and again a random part was taken from the assembly line and checked against the specifications. Quality Process Control had been taught by American engineers to the Japanese to help them rebuild their businesses after WWII. But American industry had for the most part ignored the concept. By the 1980's we had pitiful examples such as the Chrysler "K-body" cars that were unreliable, ugly hunks of soon-to-be-junk. Bad engineering, careless quality control and an arrogant belief in the superiority of products simply because of the "Made in America" tag had become the norm.
In the Automobile industry in this country, the automakers implemented Quality Process Systems (aka Controls or Assurance) and Kaizen (basically a means of continuous improvement in methods and results) and required compliance with ISO 9001/2/3 and above standards by means of internal and external audits. Assembly lines were now being sampled by specific methods designed to assure a consistent result and proactive controls were put in place so that each auto supplier had quality process controls in place from raw materials all the way to the assembly plants themselves (in the USA). The results were manifold. US-built automobiles regained their reputations as well-built, there were more management ears listening to the engineers and the industry was shaken and suffered losses but it survived. Had the automobile unions been willing to make some concessions the US would have likely seen a resurgence in domestic auto sales and growth rather than loss of market share. But while the automakers could improve their products, bad union contracts made the cost of labor tremendously higher for Detroit and therefore it was and still is hard for them to compete.
No matter, the point is that organisms had quality process controls built into them and we did not even know this until recently. This knowledge alone should have clued Darwinists into the idea that cells are designed. QPS as we called it in the auto industry is not something that one can imagine evolving, as it is sets of controls placed upon a system from outside the system itself. It is a management tool that involves auditing and testing against standards and yet organisms have been apparently doing this from the beginning while mankind did not even begin using assembly lines until the 19th Century when Samuel Colt began using the concept in rudimentary form for producing weapons and then, famously, Henry Ford applied them on a bigger scale to produce his automobiles. Decades later QPS (also called QPC, QPA and QP depending on the source) would be imposed on manufacturing systems to ensure standardized results.
Organisms have been using assembly line concepts and QPS in order to reproduce. Organisms have meta-information in the cells that are the assembly instructions for the child(ren) of the organism, and this meta-information is part of the system that assures that the same kind of organism will result. DNA has continuous repair systems in place, seeking to eliminate mutations of any kind. Algorithms that are often beyond human understanding are entered into the organism during reproduction as information is passed from generation to generation but not by teaching but rather as part of the reproductive process. The framework for the child is laid by the mother, assuring that the same kind of organism will result. Some inbuilt switches allow for certain features to be quickly changed, such as the beaks of finches. Ironic that finch beaks actually can vary quite a bit and change rapidly to adapt to conditions but this is a process inbuilt into the organism using genetic code already available for use.
Darwinists have no explanation for the rich genetic code within DNA, let alone DNA itself. They have no explanation for switching, for quality process control, for meta-information or for algorithms that are inbuilt. All of these features are design features. They are all evidence that the organisms were designed and built to be able to reproduce while having an abundance of choices within the gene pool to conserve the kind while adjusting to variations in ecosystems. "Junk" DNA turns out to be not only functional but necessary as scientists learn more about how DNA actually works and discover more and more complexity and design and information within cells of all kinds. "Vestigal" organs turn out to have uses. ERVs turn out to be highly functional rather than being leftovers from the past. In fact, the variation within kind has been revealed to be just what Edward Blyth thought it was, the selection of features available to the organism is simply part of the design of the organism. God turns out to be a great engineer.
Organisms are not evolving, they are devolving. Mankind is accumulating mutations despite the QPS processes built in to DNA. No doubt science will discover that mutations are accumulating within most populations. Despite the Darwinist myth that mutations are the drivers for the evolution of organisms, the fact is that it goes in the other direction. Mutations are the enemy of the organism, not the builder. You should be able to see this logically. There are companies that build automobiles. We call them manufacturers. There are also companies that take automobiles and strip them for parts and then crunch the remains into small metal cubes. We call them junk yards or wreckers.
Consider your home. I will use mine as an example. We purchased land, approved a blueprint for the design of the home with some variations to the standard according to our personal preferences. Various crews produced the foundation, built the house from scratch using lumber and nails and drywall and brick and mortar and so on. That crew also built the back deck. Other crews put in the wiring and plumbing. Yet another crew put in the doors and painted the walls and put on the trim. Meanwhile a crew installed the siding and roofing and soffits and gutters. One of the crews put in the windows and overhead lights and ceiling fans. A crew poured the floor of the garage, put in the driveway and the sidewalks and the front porch. We then ourselves got the sod laid for the lawn, built the dog run and put in the gravel, added trees and shrubs and gardens in front and back for decorative purposes, plus a garden in back for things like peppers and tomatoes. We had a shed built in back. With all of this, it took raw materials and design and intention and effort to build a house.
How about number 6, Chaos from Organization?
When a house is ready to be demolished, a wrecking crew comes in to perhaps take anything that appears to be of value, then knock the house down to the ground and smash it into small enough pieces to be thrown away in a big dumpster. They may separate out pipe and wiring from the rubble of wood and insulation and other junk. For the most part the house is converted to junk and hauled away to the dump. A wrecking crew tears things down and breaks things up and turns a house into a couple of dumpster loads of trash destined for the dump, where the remains will continue to be broken down by the elements and any organisms that may feed on what is left. The Second Law of Thermodynamics works on finishing the job.
If a house is left alone and not maintained, it will tear itself down. Over time the paint wears away and the roof begins to degrade. Eventually a storm will rip off a section of rotting roof and the ravages of nature get access to the interior. Likely any windows will be vulnerable to the rock-throwing bored teenagers of the neighborhood and the weather. The gutters will fill with junk and fall off. If there is siding rather than paint it will begin to rip off from age and weathering. After a few years the house will become so ugly and ravaged the neighborhood kids will declare that it is "haunted" and a few will dare to break in and spray paint their initials on the walls and perhaps break a few things. It may be that drug users will inhabit the place to use as a refuge from the outside where they can shoot themselves up and then lay around dazed from the fix. It may be that kids will choose it as a party house and go there to drink beer and wine and other things they could not do at home. Inevitably the day will come when the work of vandals and age and weather will cause the roof to cave in and the house to being to lean to one side and finally it will be overcome by nature. Soon it will be an abandoned property with weeds and brush and trees beginning to take over the spot a house once covered. Moss will thrive where the roof once was, small animals will take shelter in the wreckage, over time the casual observer may have difficulty even seeing any sign that a house was ever there without investigation.
Darwinists credit the wreckers and the ravages of time for being the builders of organisms. They tell stories about how this took place, but in real life we never see it happening. When we see mutations change an organism, it is always because of information copying or information loss. No matter how many square miles of verbiage they throw at you, real science sees design and information in organisms and no natural source of either in the material world. Intelligence produces information and intelligence produces design. Random mutations break things. In a nutshell, this is why Darwinism is a myth rather than science. It cannot give us a naturalistic source for information or design, it cannot account for life, and it certainly has the direction of Thermodynamics reversed. Organized things are becoming disorganized. Energy is being converted to entropy. Blowing things up doesn't build them and leaving them out in the elements doesn't build them. Logic! Science!
At one time, between the time of the War of 1812 and around the time of the Civil War some folks proposed that Cairo, Illinois become the US Capitol. Being right at the confluence of the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers, the tail of Illinois was going to be close to the center of the nation once completely expanded to the Pacific. With waterways being of utmost importance at the time, it was a reasonable idea. Of course it never happened. Now Cairo is a backwater that is literally falling apart. There are collapsed, abandoned houses all over, streets in need of repair, rusty cars and empty lots. The energy of the Sun has been shining on Cairo all this time, but undirected energy will never build things.
The once-possible center of government of the USA is now a monument to the Laws of Thermodynamics. Natural things go from energy to entropy, from order to disorder. Only directed energy with intentionality can make things in spite of the LOT. Mankind has to work hard to offset the continual process of order to disorder. There are no new businesses coming to Cairo to save it. There is not enough tax money to fix the streets, there are not enough investors to salvage and reopen abandoned businesses, there are not developers seeking to tear down old houses and build a new subdivision, there are just a few businesses hanging on, farmers farming, some shipping and a few small manufacturers keeping the place from disappearing from the map. You can go back and forth from Illinois to Kentucky and then from Illinois to Missouri by means of the two bridges that cross the Ohio and Mississippi before they come together and wear one name. At that point you have done the most interesting thing one can do in Cairo, Illinois. Unless, of course, your name is Cairo Water Co. and you are looking for a missing check?
Cairo makes me think of Darwinism. It was once considered foundational, just like Cairo was considered as our nation's Capitol. But it is all falling apart.