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

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.

Filed under: Podcasts, Biological Information, Body Plan, Charles Darwin, Darwinism, Epigenetic, Evolution, Genetic, Information, Mutation, Origin of Life, Protein, Selection, Specified Complexity, Stephen C. Meyer

The undisputed best book on intelligent design now has a sequel

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!

Filed under: News, Cambrian Explosion, Darwinism, Evolution, Fossil Record, Fossils, Information, Intelligence, Intelligence Cause, Intelligent Design, Naturalism, Origin

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

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

Proteins sticking onto the double helix structure of DNA:

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.

Related posts

• The kalam cosmological argument and the Big Bang theory
• The fine-tuning argument from cosmological constants and quantities
• The origin of life, part 1 of 2: the building blocks of life
• The origin of life, part 2 of 2: biological information
• The sudden origin of phyla in the Cambrian explosion
• Galactic habitable zones and circumstellar habitable zones
• Irreducible complexity in molecular machines
• The creative limits of natural selection and random mutation

Filed under: Videos, Amino Acid, Assembly, Bonding, Cell, Chance, Darwinism, Design Patterns, DNA, Doug Axe, Evidence, Evolution, Faith, Gene, Information, Intelligent Design, Law, Life, Materialism, Message, Messenger RNA, Naturalism, Necessity, OOL, Origin, Polymerase, Protein, Protein Folding, Protein Synthesis, Replicator, Ribosome, RNA, Science, Self-Organization, Sequence, Side Chains, Software Engineering, Specificity, Specified Complexity, Stephen C. Meyer, The DNA Enigma, William Dembski

Three reasons to read “Darwin’s Doubt”, the sequel to Signature in the Cell

“Darwin’s Doubt” by Stephen C. Meyer

If someone asked me to name the best intermediate to advanced book on intelligent design, I would name Stephen C. Meyer’s “Signature in the Cell“. This book even got a lot of positive comments from non-ID people, including the famous atheist philosopher Thomas Nagel. So, it’s no surprise then that I am recommending that everyone pre-order Darwin’s Doubt, which is Stephen C. Meyer’s sequel to “Signature in the Cell“.

And Casey Luskin has penned four reasons why you should pre-order it:

1. Arguments for intelligent design in the Cambrian explosion have certainly been made before. But Darwin’s Doubt will be by far the most in-depth and mature development of those arguments to date, addressing in detail many ideas and rebuttals and theories advanced by evolutionary scientists, and showing why the theory of intelligent design best explains the explosion of biodiversity in the Cambrian animals.

2. When published, Darwin’s Doubt will be the single most up-to-date rebuttal to neo-Darwinian theory from the ID-paradigm. In this regard, one exciting element of Darwin’s Doubt is that Meyer reviews much of the peer-reviewed research that’s been published by the ID research community over the last few years, and highlights how ID proponents are doing relevant research answering key questions that show Darwinian evolution isn’t up to the task of generating new functional information.

3. As many ENV readers already know, we now live in a “post-Darwinian” world, where more and more evolutionary biologists are realizing that neo-Darwinism is failing, so they scramble to propose new materialistic evolutionary models to replace the modern synthesis. (These models include, or have included, self-organization, evo-devo, punc eq, neo-Lamarckism, natural genetic engineering, neutral evolution, and others.) In this regard, Darwin’s Doubt does something that’s never been done before: it surveys the landscape of these “post-neo-Darwinian evolutionary models,” and shows why they too fail as explanations for the origin of animal body plans and biological complexity.

I’ve pre-ordered mine!

If you think this book might be too difficult for you, then I recommend an introductory book like The Politically Incorrect Guide to Darwinism and Intelligent Design.

Filed under: News, Cambrian Explosion, Darwinism, Evolution, Fossil Record, Fossils, Information, Intelligence, Intelligence Cause, Intelligent Design, Naturalism, Origin

Stephen C. Meyer and Keith Fox debate intelligent design and evolution

From Justin Brierley’s “Unbelievable” podcast.

Details:

Stephen Meyer is a leading proponent of Intelligent Design who directs the Centre for Science and Culture at the Discovery Institute in Seattle. His most recent book “Signature in the Cell” claims to show that the DNA code is the product of intelligent mind, not naturalistic processes. Keith Fox is Professor of Biochemistry at Southampton University. He chairs the UK Christians in Science network but disagrees strongly with ID. They debate how life could have originated and whether design is allowed as an explanation in science.

The MP3 file is here.

Summary: (stuff in italics is my snarky paraphrase)

Meyer:

• background and how he got interested in intelligent design
• his research focus is on the origin of life – the first replicator
• summarizes the history of origin of life studies
• authored the book “Signature in the Cell”
• the DNA enigma: where did the information in DNA come from?
• naturalistic explanations of the DNA information have failed
• but intelligent agents are known to be able to produce information
• the best explanation of the information in DNA is that an intelligent agent authored it
• Meyer’s book was named by atheist philosopher of science Thomas Nagel as a Times Literary Supplement Book of the Year in 2010
• why is design so controversial? Many people think that Darwin explained why nature appears design
• the Darwinian view is that nature can create the appearance of design using mutation and selection
• however, Darwinian mechanisms cannot explain the origin of the first living cell, it assumes replication, and the origin of life is about where the first replicator comes from

Fox:

• Meyer’s argument is not about the evolution of life after the first cell
• Meyer’s case for design is about the origin of life
• naturalists do not know a naturalistic explanation for the origin of life
• there are a number of naturalistic hypotheses for the origin of life, like the RNA-first hypothesis
• maybe in a few years one of them will turn out to be correct
• what intelligent design is arguing from a gap in our current naturalistic knowledge to infer that God intervened in nature

Meyer:

• that’s not what intelligent design is at all
• the approach ID theorists use is the inference to best explanation
• you evaluate all explanations, non-intelligent causes and intelligent causes
• you prefer the best possible explanation
• we know that minds are capable of producing information just like the information we find in DNA

Fox:

• living cells replicate, so they have the ability to introduce mutations as they replicate and then some of those mutations can be selected
• so maybe the process of replicating that living cells do created the first living cell
• maybe the first living cell created itself, X brought X into being, self-creation, what’s irrational about that?

Meyer:

• the issue is the origin of life – where did the first living cell come from?
• you cannot appeal to the operations that a living cell can perform to explain the origin of the first living cell
• there was no first living cell operating before the first living cell
• there was no replication, mutation or selection before the first living cell
• in fact, in my book I show that there is no known naturalistic mechanism that is able to produce the information needed for the first living cell
• nothing can create itself, that is self-contradictory

Fox:

• Well, you are just saying that because something is complex that God did it

Meyer:

• Sadly, no. What I actually said needed to be explained was the information, not complexity
• And we know from software engineering that the process of adding information to code is performed by programmers
• in the absence of any adequate naturalistic explanation for information, we are justified in taking the explanation that we are familiar with – namely, intelligent agency – based on our uniform, universal experience of what causes information

Fox:

• well, maybe we can appeal to the mutation and selection in existing living cells to explain the origin of the first living cell
• maybe there were living cells before the first living cell, and then these other living cells created the first living cell

Meyer:

• we can’t keep invoking mutation and selection when those processes are not operating prior to the origin of the first living cell

Fox:

• well maybe some bare-bones self-replication molecule was a precursor to the first living cell

Meyer:

• even to generate very limited replicator would require a large amount of information
• the argument I am making is – where does the evolution come from?

Fox:

• well, maybe we will think of an explanation for information that is naturalistic in 20 years
• we’ve thought of explanations to things that were NOT information before
• so maybe we will be able to think of something to explain information based on our ability to explain NOT information before

Moderator: Change topics: the Dover decision

Meyer:

• the Discovery Institute opposed the policy that causes the trial
• the wording of the statute was poor
• the judge was completely wrong in his decision
• young earth creationists used the phrase “intelligent design” to cover their agenda
• intelligent design is an inference using the normal methods of science

Fox:

• intelligent design is a science stopper because it stops looking for a naturalistic explanation
• everything in nature must have a naturalistic explanation
• everything has to be explained using matter and time and chance
• it just has to be that way!!!!

Meyer:

• well, what luck would you have explaining an effect like Mt. Rushmore?
• can you explain that using matter,time and chance?
• Mt. Rushmore was the product of intelligence, not wind and erosion
• similarly, there is information in the cell, and we know that intelligence causes information

Fox:

• So you are saying that we don’t understand and therefore an intelligence is necessary?

Meyer:

• no I am saying we DO understand and we are making an inference based on that understanding
• you are the one who is insisting on a material explanation because you pre-suppose materialism
• we know that minds have causal powers, and we can infer mind as an explanation from information

Fox:

• well nature is a seamless chain of material causes and effects

Meyer:

• agents can act without violating the laws of nature
• even humans can act as intelligent agents to create information in books, and they don’t violate the laws of nature
• intelligent causes are real, and they explain effects in nature

Fox:

• you’re trying to impose on science something to do with meaning and purpose

Meyer:

• no that’s not what we’re doing, we’re inferring from from the fact that we ourselves are known causes of information to the fact that an intelligence cause is the best explanation for information in the cell

Fox:

• but I am a materialist, I need a materialist explanation

Meyer:

• mind IS an answer to the how question
• we infer to mind in many other scientific disciplines, like cryptography, archaeology, etc.
• a materialist might accuse an archaeologist of engaging in a “scribe-of-the-gaps” argument, but the best explanation of an artifact with information is a scribe
• we are inferring that mind is the cause from the nature of the effect: information

Moderator: is it appropriate to call DNA “information”

Fox:

• well DNA is just a molecular polymer, any reference to information is just by analogy

Meyer:

• DNA is a molecular polymer, but it also exhibits the property of specified complexity
• the arrangement of bases, which function as machine instructions in a software program, for performings task in the cell
• we have observed that the property of specified complexity always comes from an intelligence

Fox:

• well, maybe there are other sequences that would work, so maybe it’s really not uncommon to develop functioning sequences by chance alone, without an intelligence

Meyer:

• you can measure how precise the functional specificity is in DNA and proteins

Moderator: is Shannon information the same as functional information

Meyer:

• Shannon information refers to the sequences of digits or symbols that do not necessarily have any function, i.e. – a four character string QSZX has as much Shannon information as WORD. However, only the latter is functional against the pattern of the English language. There are arrangements of DNA bases and amino acids that have the same number of symbols/characters as a functional sequence would have, but they have no biological function – they do not exhibit specified complexity

Fox:

• Well, maybe there are lots and lots of sequences of DNA and proteins so that it is fairly easy to get a functional one by chance

Meyer:

• DNA sequences that are functional are extremely rare, protein sequences are even more rare
• this is not my opinion, this is what the research shows – functional protein sequences are rare

Fox:

• well maybe there are other functional sequences that are occur before the first functional sequence that are precursors to the first functional sequence
• maybe there are billions of years of replication, mutation and selection before the first replication, mutation and selection

Meyer:

• you can’t get to the first selectable functional sequence by appealing to precursor selectable functional sequences – there are no selectable functional sequences before the FIRST one
• you have to get the first selectable functional sequence by chance alone, because there is nothing to mutate or select before the first replicator
• the chance hypothesis has been rejected because the minimal amount of information for the simplest replicator is too high to get by chance alone, given the resources, including time, that are available

Moderator: Keith are you confident that naturalism will be able to substantiate these naturalism-of-the-gap speculations that you offer in response to Meyer’s actual science that we have today? 

Fox:

• well, it is hard to know for sure because it was just a fluke event
• but there’s nothing irrational or unscientific or miraculous about it – the fluke would have a material explanation
• there is nothing that we can detect that would implicate God, my speculations about a fluke which I cannot observe or measure or test would all be compatible with an atheistic worldview that omits God as a causal entity

Meyer:

• where are those material processes that could account for this fluke then?
• the whole point of this argument is that the information in DNA transcends the material components in the sequence
• it’s the arrangement of the material parts/letters/characters/symbols/instructions that needs to be explained

Fox:

• Well, I just have a different philosophy of science that rules out intelligent causation a priori

Meyer:

• Yes, that’s the difference between us – you pre-suppose that all explanations of natural phenomena must exclude intelligent causes

There is a bit more where Meyer talks about how parts of the cell are implementations of various design patterns (Gang of Four design patterns) that are used by software architects who design software.

Find more posts on Stephen C. Meyer here.

Filed under: Podcasts, Amino Acid, Apologetics, Atheism, Bacterial Flagellum, Base, Big Bang, Biology, Blind Faith, Christian Apologetics, Darwinism, Evidence, Evolution, Faith, Fine Tuning, First Living Cell, Flying Spaghetti Monster, Freethought, Functional Information, Hoping, Information, Keith Fox, Materialism, Naturalism, Nucleotide, Origin of Life, Pre-Supposition, Sequence, Specified Complexity, Speculation, Stephen C. Meyer, Theism, Theistic Evolution, Tomorrow, Wishing