Tag Archives: Evolution

Podcasts

Casey Luskin and Stephen C. Meyer discuss information outside the genome

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This episode of ID the Future is 20 minutes long and it’s a follow up to a previous podcast I posted.

Details:

On this episode of ID the Future, hear the second part of Casey Luskin’s interview with Dr. Stephen C. Meyer, author of the forthcoming book Darwin’s Doubt: The Explosive Origin of Animal Life and the Case for Intelligent Design. Dr. Meyer discusses how the origin of information in the Cambrian explosion poses a problem for evolutionary biology.

Special limited time offer: Save 43% and get 4 free digital books when you pre-order Darwin’s Doubt.

You can grab the MP3 here.

Topics:

  • Last time, they discussed how the sudden origin of animal body plans requires an infusion of new information
  • Also, the sudden origin of animal forms is inexplicable naturalistically, because there are no transitional forms
  • New body plans require new genetic information
  • The Cambrian explosion involve a sudden increase of body plans, which means a sudden increase of information
  • For example, a new body plan requires dozens of new cell types
  • Each cell type will be composed of new proteins and enzymes
  • Proteins are composed of functional sequences of amino acids – genetic information
  • Can the neo-Darwinian mechanisms generate new functional sequences?
  • The problem with making functional sequences by chance: Product Rule
  • When calculating probabilities of forming a functional sequence, you multiply to calculate probabilities
  • A bike lock with 4 dials and 10 possibilities has 10 x 10 x 10 x 10 = 10,000 possibilities
  • Each sequence is equally likely to get by random guesses
  • But it’s far more likely that any random attempt will NOT work
  • Getting one or two settings right has no value to opening the lock, and will not be saved for later attempts
  • There is no credit for partial success: you have to get the whole combination right the first time
  • In addition, there are other sources of information other than DNA that are required for new body plans
  • For example, there is information in cell membranes, cytoskeletons, etc. which is also needed
  • Neo-Darwinism can only work on mutating genes – even in the best case it would just give you new proteins
  • Neo-Darwinism cannot add information in non-genome areas, which are required for new animal forms
  • The information in these non-genome areas are required to arrange the proteins to make new body pans
  • Genetic inofrmation = information in the genome, Epigenetic information = information outside the genome
  • This problem of information outside the genome is called “the problem of the origin of form”

So those last few points are, I think, a sneak peek into the contents of the new “Darwin’s Doubt” book.

If you haven’t yet read Meyer’s first book, “Signature in the Cell”, you should probably grab that one. It’s the best book on intelligent design that’s out right now. It talks about the origin of the first living cell, surveying all naturalistic explanations for it, and concluding that the best explanation – the one most consistent with what we know now – is intelligent design.

Podcasts

Stephen C. Meyer and John Lennox discuss human exceptionalism on the Michael Medved show

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The Michael Medved show is a national radio show broadcast out of Seattle, Washington. According to Talkers magazine, he has the fifth largest radio audience. He has a regular weekly segment on science and culture featuring  scholars from the Discovery Institute.

Here is the fourth segment from this past week, courtesy of the Intelligent Design: The Future podcast.

The MP3 file is available for download. (38 minutes)

The description is:

On this episode of ID the Future, Stephen Meyer and Oxford professor John Lennox discuss human exceptionalism and the deeper significance of the Gosnell verdict on the Michael Medved Show’s Science and Culture Update.

Each week, leading fellows from Discovery Institute will join Michael Medved to talk about the intersection of science and culture. Listen in live online or on your local Medved station, or stay tuned at ID the Future for the weekly podcast.

The topics this time are Kermit Gosnell, human exceptionalism and Darwinism.

Now might be a good time to subscribe to the ID: The Future podcast.

Previous entries

Polemics

Doug Axe explains the chances of getting a functional protein by chance

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I’ve talked about Doug Axe before when I described how to calculate the odds of getting functional proteins by chance.

Let’s calculate the odds of building a protein composed of a functional chain of 100 amino acids, by chance. (Think of a meaningful English sentence built with 100 scrabble letters, held together with glue)

Sub-problems:

  • BONDING: You need 99 peptide bonds between the 100 amino acids. The odds of getting a peptide bond is 50%. The probability of building a chain of one hundred amino acids in which all linkages involve peptide bonds is roughly (1/2)^99 or 1 chance in 10^30.
  • CHIRALITY: You need 100 left-handed amino acids. The odds of getting a left-handed amino acid is 50%. The probability of attaining at random only L–amino acids in a hypothetical peptide chain one hundred amino acids long is (1/2)^100 or again roughly 1 chance in 10^30.
  • SEQUENCE: You need to choose the correct amino acid for each of the 100 links. The odds of getting the right one are 1 in 20. Even if you allow for some variation, the odds of getting a functional sequence is (1/20)^100 or 1 in 10^65.

The final probability of getting a functional protein composed of 100 amino acids is 1 in 10^125. Even if you fill the universe with pre-biotic soup, and react amino acids at Planck time (very fast!) for 14 billion years, you are probably not going to get even 1 such protein. And you need at least 100 of them for minimal life functions, plus DNA and RNA.

Research performed by Doug Axe at Cambridge University, and published in the peer-reviewed Journal of Molecular Biology, has shown that the number of functional amino acid sequences is tiny:

Doug Axe’s research likewise studies genes that it turns out show great evidence of design. Axe studied the sensitivities of protein function to mutations. In these “mutational sensitivity” tests, Dr. Axe mutated certain amino acids in various proteins, or studied the differences between similar proteins, to see how mutations or changes affected their ability to function properly. He found that protein function was highly sensitive to mutation, and that proteins are not very tolerant to changes in their amino acid sequences. In other words, when you mutate, tweak, or change these proteins slightly, they stopped working. In one of his papers, he thus concludes that “functional folds require highly extraordinary sequences,” and that functional protein folds “may be as low as 1 in 10^77.”

The problem of forming DNA by sequencing nucleotides faces similar difficulties. And remember, mutation and selection cannot explain the origin of the first sequence, because mutation and selection require replication, which does not exist until that first living cell is already in place.

But you can’t show that to your friends, you need to send them a video. And I have a video!

A video of Doug Axe explaining the calculation

Here’s a clip from Illustra Media’s new ID DVD “Darwin’s Dilemma”, which features Doug Axe and Stephen Meyer (both with Ph.Ds from Cambridge University).

I hope you all read Brian Auten’s review of Darwin’s Dilemma! It was awesome.

Related DVDs

Illustra also made two other great DVDs on intelligent design. The first two DVDs “Unlocking the Mystery of Life” and “The Privileged Planet” are must-buys, but you can watch them on youtube if you want, for free.

Here are the 2 playlists:

I also recommend Coldwater Media’s “Icons of Evolution”. All three of these are on sale from Amazon.com.

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