Decent With Modification Darwin

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II Peter 116 16 For we have not followed
cunningly devised fables, when we made known unto
you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus
Christ, but were eyewitnesses of his majesty.
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The Master Designer

• Timothy G. Standish, Ph. D.

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Outline

• Does the Bible say that God designed life?
• Does life look designed?
• How do we decide if something is designed?
• Can nature design the kind of things seen in
  living systems?

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Creator, Maker, Designer

• Is there a difference between being Creator,
  Maker, or Designer?
• Perhaps - To make something does not mean that
  you planned in advance (I have made a mess many
  times with no forethought at all)
• An engineer may design a spectacular bridge but
  not be the craftsman that builds it.
• A scriptwriter may create a character, but that
  character will be played by an actor and may be
  perpetuated by other scriptwriters

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Creator is a Title of Gods

• Ecclesiastes 121 Remember now thy Creator in
  the days of thy youth, while the evil days come
  not, nor the years draw nigh, when thou shalt
  say, I have no pleasure in them.
• Isaiah 4028 Hast thou not known has thou not
  heard, that the everlasting God, the Lord, the
  Creator of the ends of the earth, fainteth not,
  neither is weary? there is no searching his
  understanding.
• Romans 125 Who changed the truth of God into a
  lie, and worshipped and served the creature more
  than the Creator, who is blessed for ever. Amen.
• 1 Peter 419 Wherefore let them that suffer
  according to the will of God commit the keeping
  of their souls to him in well doing, as unto a
  faithful Creator.

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Being Creator Makes God God

• Isaiah 455-12
• 5 I am the Lord, and there is none else, there is
  no God beside me I girded thee, though thou
  hast not known me
• 6 That they may know from the rising of the sun,
  and from the west, that there is none beside me.
  I am the Lord, and there is none else.
• 7 I form the light, and create darkness I make
  peace, and create evil I the Lord do all these
  things.
• 8 Drop down, ye heavens, from above, and let the
  skies pour down righteousness let the earth
  open, and let them bring forth salvation, and let
  righteousness spring up together I the Lord
  have created it.
• 12 I have made the earth, and created man upon
  it I, even my hands, have stretched out the
  heavens, and all their host have I commanded.

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To Be Owned By God

• The word translated Creator in the New
  Testament is always ktizo (ktizo ktid-zo)
  meaning to fabricate.
• This word comes from the root ktaomai (ktaomai
  ktah-om-ahee) a verb meaning to acquire or
  purchase.
• God both fabricated us and purchased us
• We are owned by God

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God The Maker

• Pslams 11973 Thy hands have made me and
  fashioned me give me understanding, that I may
  learn thy commandments.
• Psalms 13914 I will praise thee for I am
  fearfully and wonderfully made marvelous are
  they works and that my soul knoweth right well.
• I Corinthians 1218 But now hath God set the
  members every one of them in the body, as it hath
  pleased him.

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Gods Claim to be Designer

• Genesis 126 And God said, Let us make man in our
  image, after our likeness and let them have
  dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the
  fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over
  all the earth, and over every creeping thing that
  creepeth upon the earth.
• The Bible claims that God planned in advance to
  make beings using Himself as the model.

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God Made A Plan First

• Genesis 27 And the Lord God formed man of the
  dust of the ground, and breathed into his
  nostrils the breath of life and man became a
  living soul.
• This text clearly outlines the order of events in
  creation of man First a model was made and then
  life was given to it.
• In the creation of man there was planing and
  forethought - Design then fabrication.

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Does life look designed?
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William DembskisExplanatory Filter
Start
From Mere Creation Science, Faith and
Intelligent Design. William A. Dembski Ed.
Downers Grove, Illinois InterVarsity Press,
1998. P99.
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Is The Pattern Random Or Designed?
Probability 2-256 8.6 x 10-78 0.0000000000000
00000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000
0000000000000086
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Is The Pattern Random Or Designed?
Probability 2-256 8.6 x 10-78 0.0000000000000
00000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000
0000000000000086
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Arguments for a Designer

• Organisms look designed for at least three (3)
  reasons
• Redundancy - A Designer can engineer redundancy
  into a system, but chance is unlikely to do this.
  An example of this is the presence of degeneracy
  in the genetic code and other features that
  minimize or negate the effects of many point
  mutations.
• Excess potential - Organisms have potential that
  may never be used. For example, Wallace,
  co-discoverer of natural selection, pointed out
  that primitive people have the capacity to do
  calculus when trained. Natural selection is
  unlikely to select for capacity that is not used.
• Complexity - Life exhibits a kind of complexity
  that it is hard to produce by processes involving
  chance.

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Design and Deductive Reasoning

• In general arguments for a designer are arguments
  against the alternative. This does not mean
  these are just arguments against evolutionary
  theory. All arguments, by definition, are
  characterized by taking one side while arguing
  against another side.
• Arguments against a theory are about eliminating
  possible explanations. There is nothing inferior
  about this, in fact, it is deductive reasoning
  which is used by scientists all the time in their
  quest for truth.

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The Likely and the Unlikely

• Arguments for a Designer frequently revolve
  around probability. Meaningful complexity is
  unlikely to result from random events. Organisms
  are meaningfully complex. Some claim that
  natural selection overcomes much of this problem
  as, while change may be random, selection is not.
• Science is about predicting what is likely and
  what is unlikely. Everyone is in agreement that
  the events leading to production of living
  organisms are unlikely.

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In a Long Time and Big Universe

• It has been argued that given massive lengths of
  time and a universe to work in, the unlikely
  becomes likely
• Given infinite time, or infinite opportunities,
  anything is possible. The large numbers
  proverbially furnished by astronomy, and the
  large time spans characteristic of geology,
  combine to turn topsy-turvy our everyday
  estimates of what is expected and what is
  miraculous. Richard Dawkins (1989) The Blind
  Watchmaker Why the evidence of evolution reveals
  a universe without design. W. W. Norton and Co.
  New York. p139.
• Dawkins says that while life looks designed, the
  designer was not God, but massive chance coupled
  with natural selection. Nature was the designer.
• In The Pandas Thumb, Stephen J. Gould argues
  that life does not look designed.

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Little or Big Changes?

• Not all changes improve fitness, they may
• Improve the fitness of an organism (very
  unlikely)
• Be neutral, having no effect on fitness
• Be detrimental, decreasing an organisms fitness
  (most likely)
• The bigger the change the more likely it is to be
  significantly detrimental
• Darwin argued that evolution is the accumulation
  of many small changes that improve fitness, big
  changes are unlikely to result in improved
  fitness.
• Many large groups of facts are intelligible only
  on the principle that species have been evolved
  by very small steps.
• The Origin of Species Chapter VII under Reasons
  for disbelieving in great and abrupt
  modifications

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Behes Insight

• Michael Behe contends that when we look at the
  protein machines that run cells, there is a point
  at which no parts can be removed and still have a
  functioning machine. He called these machines
  irreducibly complex (IC)
• We encounter irreducibly complex devices in
  everyday life. A simple mouse trap is an example
  of an irreducibly complex device

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I. C. Protein Machines

• Cells are full of irreducibly complex devices -
  Little protein machines that work only if all the
  parts (proteins) are present and arranged
  correctly.
• Natural selection does not provide a plausible
  mechanism to get from nothing to the collection
  of parts necessary to run a number of irreducibly
  complex protein machines vital to living cells
• Evolution of these protein machines must occur in
  single big steps, not gradually, as to be
  selected a protein must be functional in some
  way. Each protein machine is fairly complex,
  thus evolution in a single step seems unlikely.

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Cilia and Flagella

• Cilia and Flagella are examples of irreducibly
  complex protein machines.
• Both cilia and flagella are found in the simplest
  eukaryotic organisms, single celled protists, as
  well as much more complex animals. Some members
  of the plant kingdom also have flagella.
• As complicated structures are thought to have
  evolved only once, evolutionary theory suggests
  flagella evolved in a very ancient common
  ancestor of modern plant and animal cells.

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Components of Flagella and Cilia

• Flagella and cilia are made of a number of
  different protein components
• Three types of microtubules - singlet, doublet,
  and triplet - composed of a and b tubulin
• Nexin to separate the tubuals
• Protein spokes connecting tubuals to maintain a
  constant diameter
• Spoke heads
• Dynein arms that interact with adjacent
  microtubuals
• A basal plate
• Each of these components must be present if the
  flagella or cillia is to work.

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Flagella Parts
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Are Little Jumps Possible?

• Cilia or flagella, missing any single partwill
  not bend, they are thus irreducibly complex
• Parts having functions enhancing fitness
  independent of a role in locomotion, after
  developing some functionality, could evolve via
  random change and natural selection
• Microtubuals are an important part of the
  cytoskeleton of all eukaryotic cells, thus they
  could evolve independently
• No other protein components of cilia and flagella
  have known functions independent of their role in
  movement
• Thus, all proteins, other than tubulin in
  microtubuals, would have to spontaneously come
  into existence simultaneously if they were to
  increase fitness and be selected.
• That seems like a big jump!

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There Is More

• Cilia and flagella represent the tip of the ice
  burg of our current understanding of the little
  machines that make up cells. Our current
  understanding of how cells function is still
  fragmentary, but even in this limited set of
  knowledge, numerous examples of irreducible
  complexity exist.
• Irreducible complexity at the biochemical level
  represents a powerful challenge to the theory
  that natural selection can account for the origin
  of modern living organisms.

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Evolution of Complex Organs

• The Origin of Species Chapter VI "Difficulties of
  the Theory"
• Organs of Extreme Perfection and Complication
• To suppose that the eye with all its inimitable
  contrivances for adjusting the focus to different
  distances, for admitting different amounts of
  light, and for the correcting of spherical and
  chromatic aberration, could have been formed by
  natural selection, seems, I freely confess,
  absurd in the highest degree.

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Evolution of the Eye

• To go from nothing to an eye would be a very big
  jump
• Darwin proposed a series of what appeared to be
  relatively small steps (they are still gigantic
  leaps) that might be able to produce an eye

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