Tag Archives: Information

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.

News

The undisputed best book on intelligent design now has a sequel

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The very best book on intelligent design is Dr. Stephen C. Meyer’s “Signature in the Cell“, which discusses the knotty problem of the origin of life. And now, a new book by Dr. Meyer has been announced to tackle another huge problem: the fossil record.

Here is the description of the new book, entitled “Darwin’s Doubt”:

Darwin’s Origin of Species launched a revolution whose scientific, cultural and spiritual effects are still with us. Now a new revolution is on the horizon. On June 18, the HarperOne imprint of HarperCollins will publish Darwin’s Doubt: The Explosive Origin of Animal Life and the Case for Intelligent Design, by Stephen C. Meyer.

[…]Meyer begins with what Darwin himself regarded as a troubling enigma, a subject of doubt and even some scientific distress. It is a mystery from which subsequent generations of Darwinists have sought to distract the public’s attention. Some 530 million years ago, in the event called the Cambrian explosion, there sprang suddenly into existence the majority of animal body plans (phyla) that have existed on Earth. The shallow seas of the Cambrian period abruptly teemed with diverse, exotic animals.

Evolutionary biologists and paleontologists have struggled to explain this epic event. Dr. Meyer takes his readers on a journey through scientific history, starting with the discovery of the Burgess Shale by Charles Walcott in 1909. He shows how failed attempts to give a satisfying Darwinian explanation of the Cambrian explosion have opened the door to increasingly profound questions, posed by evolutionary biologists themselves, leading to a far greater mystery: the origin of the biological information necessary to build the animals of the Cambrian and all the living creatures that have existed on Earth.

I have already pre-ordered my copy!

Videos

What is intelligent design? Dr. Stephen C. Meyer explains the theory

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A MUST-SEE lecture based on Dr. Stephen C. Meyer’s book “Signature in the Cell“.

You can get an MP3 of the lecture here. (30 MB)

I highly recommend watching the lecture, and looking at the slides. The quality of the video and the content is first class. There is some Q&A (9 minutes) at the end of the lecture.

Topics:

  • intelligent design is concerned with measuring the information-creating capabilities of natural forces like mutation and selection
  • Darwinists think that random mutations and natural selection can explain the origin and diversification of living systems
  • Darwinian mechanisms are capable of explaining small-scale adaptive changes within types of organisms
  • but there is skepticism, even among naturalists, that Darwinian mechanisms can explain the origin of animal designs
  • even if you concede that Darwinism can account for all of the basic animal body plans, there is still the problem of life’s origin
  • can Darwinian mechanisms explain the origin of the first life? Is there a good naturalistic hypothesis to explain it?
  • there are at least two places in the history of life where new information is needed: origin of life, and Cambrian explosion
  • overview of the structure of DNA and protein synthesis (he has helpful pictures and he uses the snap lock blocks, too)
  • the DNA molecule is composed of a sequence of proteins, and the sequence is carefully selected to have biological function
  • meaningful sequences of things like computer code, English sentences, etc. require an adequate cause
  • it is very hard to arrive at a meaningful sequence of a non-trivial length by randomly picking symbols/letters
  • although any random sequence of letters is improbable, the vast majority of sequences are gibberish/non-compiling code
  • similarly, most random sequences of amino acids are lab-proven (Doug Axe’s work) to be non-functional gibberish
  • the research showing this was conducted at Cambridge University and published in the Journal of Molecular Biology
  • so, random mutation cannot explain the origin of the first living cell
  • however, even natural selection coupled with random mutation cannot explain the first living cell
  • there must already be replication in order for mutation and selection to work, so they can’t explain the first replicator
  • but the origin of life is the origin of the first replicator – there is no replication prior to the first replicator
  • the information in the first replicator cannot be explained by law, such as by chemical bonding affinities
  • the amino acids are attached like magnetic letters on a refrigerator
  • the magnetic force sticks the letters ON the fridge, but they don’t determine the specific sequence of the letters
  • if laws did determine the sequence of letters, then the sequences would be repetitive
  • the three materialist explanations – chance alone, chance and law, law alone – are not adequate to explain the effect
  • the best explanation is that an intelligent cause is responsible for the biological explanation in the first replicator
  • we know that intelligent causes can produce functional sequences of information, e.g. – English, Java code
  • the structure and design of DNA matches up nicely with the design patterns used by software engineers (like WK!)

There are some very good tips in this lecture so that you will be able to explain intelligent design to others in simple ways, using everyday household items and children’s toys to symbolize the amino acids, proteins, sugar phosphate backbones, etc.

Proteins are constructed from a sequence of amino acids:

A sequence of amino acids forming a protein
A sequence of amino acids forming a protein

Proteins sticking onto the double helix structure of DNA:

Some proteins sticking onto the sugar phosphate backbone
Some proteins sticking onto the sugar phosphate backbone

I highly, highly recommend this lecture. You will be delighted and you will learn something.

Here is an article that gives a general overview of how intelligent design challenges. If you want to read something more detailed about the material that he is covering in the lecture above related to the origin of life, there is a pretty good article here.

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