Just wondering if you have an accurate understanding of the evolutionary mechanisms you’re claiming aren’t sufficient…
So if someone disagrees with you, are they always wrong?
In Signature in the Cell:
p.128
“A protein within the ribosome known as a peptidyl transferase then catalyzes a polymerization (linking) reaction involving the two (tRNA-borne) amino acids.”
Contrast with http://www.hhmi.org/news/hhmi-researcher-thomas-steitz-wins-nobel-prize-chemistry:
“Since Thomas Cech had shown that RNA could have catalytic activity, we had suspected that the 50S subunit was basically a ribozyme,” said Steitz. "However, there was no proof. Nobody had been able to show that the RNA by itself showed catalytic properties in the absence of the protein. Now we can see that part of the reason is probably the nature of these proteins that are holding the ribosome together.
“Our structure shows that these proteins are deeply embedded in the RNA and are essential for its folding. And it shows unambiguously that the ribosome is a ribozyme because we can see where the substrate binds and there’s no protein atom near enough to that site to produce any [peptidyltransferase] catalytic activity.”
Or more blatantly, from a preceding Nobel Laureate:
Structural Biology. The Ribosome Is a Ribozyme
TR Cech. Science 289 (5481), 878-879, 2000
“…atomic resolution of the structure of the large ribosomal subunit reveals that, as predicted by those convinced of a prebiotic RNA world, RNA is the catalytic component with proteins being the structural units that support and stabilize it.”
Then there’s a compensatory falsehood in which Meyer misrepresents the RNA World hypothesis:
p.298
“According to this [RNA-first] model, these RNA enzymes eventually were replaced by the more efficient proteins that perform enzymatic functions in modern cells.”
Only in cases in which evolution could perform the replacement. Contrast with the paper Meyer himself cited that predicted what Steitz and others demonstrated:
“But a few RNA enzymic activities still exist, the two described recently, and possibly others in the role of ribosomal RNA or in the splicing of eukaryotic messenger RNA.”
Gilbert, W., The RNA World, Nature 319:618, 1986
Gross incompetence or deliberate dishonesty?
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Nope. It’s a specific case: most people who express reservations about evolution grossly misrepresent it, usually by omitting important aspects of it, such as the importance of existing variation, which is all Darwin knew and which anyone can see.
Or in Meyer’s case, the fact that peptidyltransferase, the enzyme that catalyzes the peptide bonds in protein synthesis, is a ribozyme. It’s easy to see why evolution would be unable to replace an absolutely essential function once protein synthesis emerged from an RNA World. Why would an Intelligent Designer use an inferior catalyst for such an important function?
Or even better, here’s a challenge for you, Marty: point to a single creationist or ID proponent who addresses the actual evidence of twin nested hierarchies of both organisms and their component proteins, and doesn’t just blow this off as mere “similarity.”
Wow. I’m shocked at your riveted attention to meaningless detail. I’m going to quote a chunk from Meyer’s paragraph in your first example for everyone’s context:
“After the initiator codon (AUG) on the mRNA transcript binds to the anticodon triplet on the corresponding tRNA, then the second and larger subunit of the ribosome rejoins the first, forming a large complex of molecules including both ribosomal subunits, the mRNA, and a tRNA molecule carrying its corresponding amino acid. The protein chain can now begin to form. An additional amino acid– tRNA combination (known as an aminoacyl-tRNA molecule) binds to a second and adjacent active site on the ribosome, bringing its amino acid into close proximity to the first. A protein within the ribosome known as a peptidyl transferase then catalyzes a polymerization (linking) reaction involving the two (tRNA-borne) amino acids. In the process, the first amino acid detaches from its tRNA and attaches to the second amino acid, forming a short dipeptide chain…” Meyer, Signature in the Cell, p 128.
I have bolded the use of “protein” that @benkirk finds to be “incompetence” or “dishonesty”, and anyone can see that whether this is a protein or an RNA is completely and utterly irrelevant to the description Meyer is developing. Meyer is not arguing that it is a protein, it’s just that he obviously thought when he wrote this, as did many others for a long time, that the heart of that ribosome was a protein.
The other example you give is where Meyer is summarizing the RNA World view, and obviously he is leaving out tons of details. Your choice to criticize here is, again, totally unnecessary attention to a trivial matter, and calling it “incompetence” or “dishonesty” is completely unwarranted.
If that’s what constitutes incompetence and dishonesty to you, we have different definitions of the words. I find both of these examples of yours to be among the most trivial and hyper critical that perhaps I have ever seen.
Sure, but miraculous in the sense of awesome. Despite Christians happy to sit back in our armchairs, some people are working on new ideas like this one:
https://www.quantamagazine.org/a-new-thermodynamics-theory-of-the-origin-of-life-20140122/
Young guy but promising ideas: http://web.mit.edu/physics/people/faculty/england_jeremy.html
Another fellow who also writers popular science books: Publications Archive — Nick Lane
Or another overview: Biology's First Law: The Tendency for Diversity and Complexity to Increase in Evolutionary Systems
But we say, eh, needs a miracle. Not impressed. Why don’t these ID folks start researching big questions like these instead of poking sticks at research that’s already been done?
Good thing we have genetic evidence to complete the story of our more recent past. What do you expect to happen with evolution? Things just don’t keep on changing randomly unless there are selection pressures from outside sources like the environment or a genetic mutation gives certain finches an advantage. Cool story learned by the genetic sequence of finches:
https://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v518/n7539/full/nature14181.html
We present evidence that the ALX1 locus contributes to beak diversity, within and among species. The derived ALX1-B haplotype associated with blunt beaks has a long evolutionary history (hundreds of thousands of years), because its origin predates the radiation of vegetarian, tree and ground finches.
That’s some pretty strong evidence for evolution and a profound result that’s been seen many times before, especially in regards to specific mutations predating new species. Where mutations are neutral and then get selected upon hundreds of thousands of years later.
Another neat thing was posted on these forums recently, an excellent powerful case for common descent: ERV evidence for pastor with a lawyer's mind - #3 by T_aquaticus
Any. And actual ID hypothesis. Or wait, can they not be tested or falsified? I can never recall why they don’t test their own theories but pick on other ones and it seems that they don’t even read most of them.
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Kinda like I thought. You don’t really want to understand what I think. You just want to tell me where I’m wrong. OK. I’ll let you have the last word.
Hey, @pevaquark!
That’s quite an article!!
This quote comes from the article:
"You start with a random clump of atoms, and if you shine light on it for long enough, it should not be so surprising that you get a plant,” England said.
I think you will find this extremely interesting proposal will fall on deaf YEC ears. They will say this hypothesis is begging the question.
If you shine sunlight on a boulder for 5 billion years… you will end up with a moderately hot rock… not a life form.
The author’s argument only works if the listener already supposes that the system is capable of creating even just the simplest of life without God’s decision to make it so.
Hi Marty,
Since you and I are both familiar with Reasons To Believe (RTB), and RTB is generally regarded as within the ID camp, perhaps we could make some progress by speaking of them.
First, I am very favorably impressed with Hugh Ross for several reasons:
- He is obviously devoted to Christ.
- He is passionate about and committed to evangelism.
- In the area of science in which Ross is personally knowledgeable (astrophysics), RTB does first-rate work educating the general public.
- RTB makes philosophically and scientically sound fine-tuning arguments for belief in God. I don’t go quite as far as Ross; I characterize the arguments as suggestive/supportive for faith, whereas Ross tends to finish his argument with a Q.E.D. But I acknowledge that not much space separates us.
- Ross is gracious in his conversations with those with whom he disagrees.
- Ross is not “milking” the non-profit ministry he heads for undue personal profit.
No doubt you are anticipating a “but,” and I lament that I will not disappoint you. Ross is out of his depth when he advocates the day-age theory of Genesis. It was often painful for me to listen to him debate Jason Lisle of AIG on the age of the universe. Ross would make a great points about the astrophysics and geology. Then when Ross was ready to seal the deal, he would suddenly lurch into a discussion of whether Adam had a belly-button and what Adam’s lipid panel would or would not have revealed. Sigh.
Likewise, Faz Rana of RTB exhibits all of the fine characteristics of his colleague, except for one: mastery of a relevant branch of science. As a biochemist, Rana does not seem to grasp the issues in evolutionary biology. His articles seem to me to be a stream of God-of-the-gaps arguments based largely on misapprehensions of the claims of evolutionary biology.
It’s a shame because Rana would be well-qualified to make a fine-tuning argument based on biochemistry. I.e., it’s not that evolution didn’t happen, but the fact that it was able to happen at all points to a divine wisdom in the order of the universe.
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I think you are quite likely more familiar with the ID literature than I am, but I think @pevaquark has a point. Do you know of any published (any journal) research by any ID group (DI or otherwise) that tests new hypotheses rather than attacking evolution? I would love to see some (speaking genuinely).
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Good point, though 5 billion years of a boulder is hardly equivalent to shining light on fluid atoms and amino acids.
My main point in sharing, besides it’s a pretty cool idea was just that people are creatively working on the problem (and England is also an Orthodox Jew)- scientists are not content to just sit in a chair and claim God did it. I do apologize in part to @Marty as I am just frutrated in general with the Christian response.
The ones trying to figure out what started the Big Bang (and area I study and teach a lot) are visibly not Christian, and some vocal Christian leaders (like Hugh Ross or William Lane Craig) have a decent following capitalizing on this lack of knowledge and Christians are so out of date with our arguments as a result. The same applies to evolution and the origins of life. We are happy to just sit back and argue for God while we can, happily ignorant of loads of new research and even old research.
@Marty I’m trying to listen to you. Your arguments were as follows:
- Origins of Life means a miracle (I agree, though there are some cool ideas that are being published in journals and just saying it’s impossible or doing terrible probability calculations like Behe’s one book is just not good)
- Evolution is struggling and got help. (note: I definitely disagree but can see if you read a lot of DI folks you might pick up some of their bad ideas. The idea of ‘got help’ is also vague and unscientific and unprovable. You would need to actually show exactly how the Divine altered DNA to have any merit to the entire ID movement)
- Human consciousness is currently a mystery - I haven’t studied much here, though this is not naturalism of the gaps, but we posit God in three perceived gaps
In general I am very disappointed with all the ID stuff and have been disillusioned with them since rewatching the Kitzmiller vs. Dover trial. This was there chance to shine and they showed me that the emperor has no clothes.
Hi Chris! Glad to have you on this thread. No problems with a “but” from you. We have exchanged respectful conversations before, and I look forward to continuing.
I appreciate you listing positives of RTB folk, of which I agree there are many. Like you, I disagree with some things I hear there. I go with RTB because they are closest aligned to what I think.
I’ll have to check out that debate, and I may cringe with you. If it was you or me in his shoes, there might be a lot more cringes, right?
I have seen some stuff by Dr. Rana that I felt was a bit forced, god-of-the-gaps, but a lot of it seems sound to me. If you have a particular column in mind, include a link, and we can discuss it.
Just to be sure you know, Rana does not “disbelieve” in Evolution. I think he and I share the perspective that it’s not strong enough or fast enough.
Thanks for jumping in, and great to hear from you again.
Hi George. Every scientific proposal for naturalist origins falls on deaf YEC ears, cuz they know God already told us how he did it. Right?
As for J England, “[a system] will often gradually restructure itself in order to dissipate increasingly more energy.” Interesting idea in isolation, but if that actually worked with biomolecules, I’m pretty sure that with all the energy fired at all the different configurations of stuff over the last 60 years, someone would have seen it happen long before now.
Fred Hoyle said, “If there were some deep principle that drove organic systems towards living systems, the operation of the principle should easily be demonstrable in a test tube in half a morning. Needless to say, no such demonstration has ever been given." He exaggerates the time frame (half a morning), yes, but the idea is still true 35 years later.
I’d be cautious until we get England’s lab results. This looks like overly enthusiastic science press to me.
I know you’re not on speaking terms with me, but do you have a particular column in mind? I can go poking around their website again but in general its just a repeat of arguments from Origins of Life: Biblical and Evolutionary Models Face Off (which to me was build up strawmen and arbitrary models) and their book on Adam (which from my perspective ignored large amounts of publications and hand selected a few to support their model).
Well, sincerely, thank you for that. Let’s attempt a reset together.
For my part, I am here to learn and understand alternative views. But just be aware that I am well versed in the science, and have reached conclusions based on how I see the data. I have no a priori commitment or concern about how God did things, but I do have opinions! And I think that the naturalist paradigm that is somewhat enforced by our culture has affected interpretations to where a lot of people can’t even see where it fails. I think it fails in limited places mentioned in different degrees.
Yes, poorly constructed probability arguments are common on both sides. I am truly shocked at how many times I hear, “hundreds of millions of years” as if that solves something. That’s just one factor in the numerator. Some people increase the numerator and ignore the denominator. Others do vice versa. Assumptions, assumptions, and in the end, finding exactly what you wanted to prove.
Do you have a specific reference to Behe’s?
Crack me up! I read pretty widely, and there are bad ideas all over the map. But the concern you have here is a philosophical one, not a scientific one. “Got help” is vague because intentionality is not reproducible. I would encourage you to consider whether you are arguing from scientism, that only scientifically testable ideas are valid.
Think instead in terms of Crime Scene Investigation, where it may be possible to determine without doubt that something was an intentional action, and not an accident. But then there may be insufficient evidence to determine the perp’s identity. There may be no further hypothesis to develop or investigate. So I don’t think I need to show “how the Divine altered DNA”.
Anyway, I gotta run. Hopefully we can pick this up again. God bless!
Good, this will make things much more interesting. That is a funny introduction to yourself though. Hi I’m Marty and know science pretty well, so be aware. At least you’ve looked at some data yourself though for myself reading RTB material has left me confused at how they come to certain conclusions based upon papers they cite (while ignoring many others).
Here is one example for me that I wrote about in response to a recent article written by Fuz: Reviewing Adam and the Genome - #143 by pevaquark
This to me, is basically cherry picking papers, coming to hasty conclusions and ignoring other studies. I do still stand by my analysis of the tactic that I see a lot of on anti-evolution websites-- “Here is a weakness of this one part of this theory, therefore it is false and my own version is true” (in this quote ‘my own version’ can be YEC, RTB, etc.). All the YEC science articles do it. At least RTB has much more science in it (related to Cosmology) than some others. Maybe you can shine some light on where I’m going wrong here.
Yeah but. We are getting new evidence all the time. As in every day. Here’s another new neat paper:
Popsci article:
http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2017/07/how-sunlight-might-have-jump-started-life-earth
Actual paper: Browse Articles | Nature Chemistry and also referenced in the popsci article: Common origins of RNA, protein and lipid precursors in a cyanosulfidic protometabolism | Nature Chemistry
Note: I hate referencing pop-sci articles as they often dramatize headlines to get readers and clicks on ads but it can help get the gist of highly technical research papers.
Question: RTB?
Ray 
I suppose that’s true, and you’ll get to form your own opinion about it! 
But I guess I’d prefer that someone test that hypothesis first, and not start with the assumption that I’m clueless. Thanks for giving it a try!
Frankly, I’m not pleased with his approach to Adam and Eve either and in general I agree with your assessment. I think that is the weakest thing I’ve seen out of RTB. I also was disappointed and a little disturbed.
I just wrote a paragraph for a discussion I will be leading somewhat related to this:
“It would be good to research some new directions, and when scientists do, they are bound to find more small molecule analogs of subsets of cell-like processes. Cells work the way they do by following natural law, therefore subsets and analogs of their processes should be able to occur naturally. By analogy, if we find a water mill grinding grain, it is no surprise to separately find a waterfall. But much more is needed than finding individual analogs of part of some cellular process. For example, self-replicating RNA is fascinating science, but since they provided an unlimited supply (issue 1) of purified (issue 2) and activated (issue 3) nucleotides (issue 4), they should not yet claim that it is relevant to OoL.”
I respect that in the last paragraph of the popsci article, the researcher in your link is reserved about the implications.
I don’t have access to the papers, so I don’t know if the following is an issue here. But often researchers use a focused wavelength at the “right” frequency to provide the exact activation energy their reaction needs. But “natural” light is broad spectrum, and just as likely to break things as build them. Did they use a particular wavelength in the lab?
In summary, I’m all for more research, but the connections with Origins seem to me almost always way too premature.
And BTW - thanks for re-engaging thoughtfully. Enjoying your feedback!
gotcha. Thanks for the blurb. 