Transcript Challenges to the Theory of Evolution

Life – Design,
Complexity, Information
Dr. Heinz Lycklama
[email protected]
www.osta.com/messages
@ Dr. Heinz Lycklama
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Life: Design, Complexity, Information
1.
2.
Chance, Necessity (Law) or Design?
Characteristics of Life:


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3.
4.
5.
6.
Design
Complexity (Irreducible and Specified)
Information
Examples of Complexity
Mathematical Probability
Life From Non-life By Chance?
In Conclusion
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1. Chance, Necessity (Law) or Design?
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Chance, Necessity or Design?
Scratches on cave wall
Human genome
3B
Base
Pairs
20T
Cells
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The Evolutionists’ Response?

“Even if all the data point to an intelligent designer,
such a hypothesis is excluded from science because
it is not naturalistic.”

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“Biology is the study of complicated
things that have the appearance of
having been designed for a purpose.”
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
S.C. Todd, Kansas State University Professor
Richard Dawkins, Oxford Univ. Atheist Biologist
“Biologists must constantly keep
in mind that what they see was
not designed, but rather evolved.”

Francis Crick, Co-discoverer of DNA
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The Meaning of Evolution
1.
Artificial Selection
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2.
Change
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3.
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Small variation within prescribed limits of complexity
e.g., finch beaks by mutation and natural selection
Macro-Evolution

5.
Evolution of a coastline (random)
Evolution of a car (designed)
Micro-Evolution

4.
Plant and animal breeding
Only 1, 2 and 3
have been observed
4 never observed!
Particles -> people
Molecular Evolution

5 is impossible!
Origin of life – assumes a mutating replicator
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2. Characteristics of Life
Design, Complexity, Information
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Specified complexity and irreducible complexity
are reliable indications of design
Biological systems exhibit specified complexity
and use irreducibly complex subsystems
Naturalistic mechanisms or undirected causes do
not suffice to explain origin of complexity
Intelligent Design constitutes the best explanation
for the origin of specified complexity and
irreducible complexity in biological systems
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2a. Evidence for Design


Cosmology: evidence suggests the universe-including all matter, space, time, and energy-came suddenly into existence a finite time ago,
contradicting the picture of an eternal and selfexisting material cosmos
Physics: evidence has shown that the universe is
"finely-tuned" for the existence of life, suggesting
the work, as Astrophysicist Fred Hoyle puts it,
"of a super-intellect”
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More Evidence for Design


Biology: the presence of complex and
functionally integrated machines has cast doubt
on Darwinian mechanisms of self-assembly
Molecular biology: the presence of information
encoded along the DNA molecule has suggested
the activity of a prior designing intelligence
Harvard biologist Richard Lewontin urges scientists
to embrace a "materialism [that] is absolute" and to
stick with "material explanations, no matter how
counter intuitive."
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2b1. Irreducible Complexity

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Mike Behe introduced the concept
of irreducible complexity in his
book, Darwin’s Black Box
Something is irreducibly complex
if it is composed of two or more
necessary parts
Remove one part and function is
not just impaired but destroyed
A mousetrap is irreducibly complex
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The Mousetrap
•A mousetrap cannot be built by natural selection
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“Irreducible Complexity” Defined

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“By irreducibly complex I mean a single system
composed of several well-matched, interacting parts
that contribute to the basic function, wherein the
removal of any one of the parts causes the system to
effectively cease functioning
An irreducibly complex system cannot be produced
directly... by slight, successive modifications of a
precursor system, because any precursor to an
irreducibly complex system that is missing a part is by
definition nonfunctional”
Michael Behe, Darwin’s Black Box, p. 39.
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2b2. Specified Complexity
The following strings of characters illustrate the
concept of Specified Complexity.
Consider the following:
Complex but unspecified:
“fjbn ghtur ieiod ofjkgjbn mfkritj”
Complex and specified:
“The state of education in America”
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How To Detect Specified Complexity

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Contingency: No physical
constraint; all sorts of strings can
appear on the paper
Complexity: Improbable to
obtain by pure chance
Specification: Can’t read it, but
fits properties of a language,
priorly known

Günaydinlar!
Bugün hava iyi,
ancak yarin daha
kötü olacak gibi.
Bulut çok, ama ne
yapar, belli degil.
DNA also a code…
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Testing for Design
Günaydinlar!
Bugünh ava iyi,
ancak yarin daha
kötü ol acak gib i.
Bulut çok, ama ne
yapar,b elli degil.
contingency
contingency
F G
m1m 2
r12
complexity
specification
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Start
Highly
probable?
William Dembski’s
Explanatory Filter
Yes
Law
Yes
Chance
Yes
Design
No
Intermediate
probability?
No
Specified/
Small probability?
No
Chance
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
=0.0000000000
0000000000000
0000000000000
0000000000000
0000000000000
0000000000000
0086
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Is The
Pattern
Random Or
Designed?
Probability:
=2-256
=8.6 x 10-78
=0.0000000000
0000000000000
0000000000000
0000000000000
0000000000000
0000000000000
0086
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2c. Information & Presuppositions
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Evolution presupposition
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Creation presupposition
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The universe consists of only two material
fundamental entities – mass and energy
There is a third entity – information
Information is encoded within the DNA/RNA of
all plant and animal cells
Life = material +
(nonmaterial) information
Information has these 4 parts:

Code, meaning, action, purpose
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Information in Biological Systems

Code: 4 letters – adenine (A),
cytosine (C), guanine (G), thymine (T)
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Meaning: each 3-letter word represents
1 of the 20 amino acids necessary for
protein formation
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Words (codons) composed of 3 letters
Sequence of codons in the DNA represents
sequence of amino acids in a protein
Action: proteins needed for construction,
function, maintenance, reproduction of the
organism and its cellular components
Purpose: reproduction of life
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3. Examples of Complexity

Types of complexity:
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Irreducible and Specified
Complex structures/information
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Cell structure
The human eye
Molecular motors
Metamorphosis of the butterfly
Bombardier beetle
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Complexity of the Cell
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Average human body contains 75+ trillion cells
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Examining the Cell
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How to examine the cell?
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The Human Eye
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Staggering complexity
Can’t be explained by step-by-step
random mutation and selection
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Functions of The Human Eye
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Automatic aiming, focusing, aperture adjustment
Functions from almost complete
darkness to bright sunlight
Can see a fine hair
Makes about 100,000 separate
motions per day
Provides us a continuous series
of color stereoscopic pictures
All performed without complaint
Carries out its own maintenance while we sleep
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Molecular Machines
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Behe showed that the
cell, Darwin’s Black
Box, is filled with
irreducibly complex
molecular machines
that could not be built
by natural selection
David Hume criticized
Paley’s watchmaker
argument because it
was not an exact
enough analogy
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Molecular Machines (cont’d)
Over 100 molecular motors are now known to exist inside the
cell with very specific analogies to human designed motors.
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Metamorphosis of the Butterfly
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Bombardier Beetle
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4. Mathematical Probability
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Chances of getting all heads
in a row when flipping a coin?
1 head
2 heads in a row
3 heads in a row
10 heads in a row
100 heads in a row
1000 heads in a row
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1 in 2
1 in 4
1 in 8
1 in 210 (1024) or 103
1 in 2100 or 1030
1 in 21000 or 10300
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5. Life From Non-Life By Chance?
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What is the probability that an explosion in a
junk yard would “create” a car?
What is the probability of creating a Boeing
airplane from such an explosion?
What is the probability that 200 monkeys
pawing away at a typewriter could
“write” a Shakespearean play?
What is the probability of a protein
coming into being by chance?
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Proteins and Amino Acids
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Amino acids
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Proteins - the building blocks of life
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A few thousand types
Right- and left-handed
Large organic molecule
Contain 100’s to a few 1000 amino acids
Specified long sequences of amino acids
Contain 20 different left-handed amino acids
Crucial protein fact
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Absence, addition, or replacement of a single amino acid
in the structure of a protein causes protein to be useless
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Probability of Forming one Protein
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Take 200 parts and line them up in a specific order
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200! ways of aligning these parts = 10**375
Try a new alignment 1 billion times a second
Assuming 20 billion years of time, we have
20 * 10**18 seconds
The probability of finding the right alignment
is practically zero, i.e. 1 in 10**356
Only 10**80 atoms in the whole universe
Anything less than 1 in 10**50 is
regarded as zero probability
Living organisms contain many more than 200 parts
Human being contains 60+ trillion cells
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How Simple Can Life Be?
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Cell structure unknown by Darwin
Smallest bacteria
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482 genes
600 types of proteins
580,000 DNA
base pairs (letters)
Probability of chance
formation is zero!
Human genome
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3,000,000,000
base pairs
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Spontaneous Formation of Life?
“The likelihood of the spontaneous formation of
life from inanimate matter is one to a number
with 40,000 noughts after it. It is big enough to
bury Darwin and the whole theory of evolution.
There was no primeval soup, neither on this
planet nor on any other, and if the beginnings of
life were not random, they must therefore have
been the product of purposeful intelligence.”
Wickramasinghe, professor of applied mathematics and astronomy, UK
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Probability & Life

A single protein: 1 in 10240
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400 amino acids
A single cell: 1 in 1040,000
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Spontaneous formation of life
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Atoms in the universe: 1 in 1080
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Law of Probability: 1 in 1050
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The Origin of Life
“Research on the origin of life seems to be unique in that
the conclusion has already been authoritatively accepted
…. What remains to be done is to find the scenarios
which describe the detailed mechanisms and processes
by which this happened. One must conclude that,
contrary to the established and current wisdom, a
scenario describing the genesis of life on earth by
chance and natural causes which can be accepted on the
basis of fact and not faith has not yet been written.”
Yockey, H. P., A calculation of the probability of spontaneous
biogenesis by information theory, Journal of Theoretical Biology
67:377-398, 1977.
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Living Matter and Information
“It’s a shame that there are precious few hard facts when it
comes to the origin of life. We have a rough idea when it
began on Earth, and some interesting theories about
where, but the how part has everybody stumped. Nobody
knows how a mixture of lifeless chemicals spontaneously
organized themselves into the first living cell.”

Paul Davies, Australian astrobiologist [Evolutionist]
“There is no known law of nature, no known process and
no known sequence of events which can cause
information to originate by itself in matter.”

Werner Gitt, German information scientist [Creationist]
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6. In Conclusion
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Life = material (mass, energy) +
non-material (information)
Life requires:
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Design, thus a Designer
Irreducible complexity
Specified complexity
Information, i.e. DNA
Life cannot come from non-life by chance
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Proven by scientific experiments
Mathematically impossible
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Thank you
for your
attention!
Dr. Heinz Lycklama
[email protected]
www.osta.com
www.osta.com/messages
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