Transcript Decent With Modification Darwin’s Theory

2 Peter 1:16
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.
©2000 Timothy G. Standish
The Master Designer
Timothy G. Standish, Ph. D.
©2000 Timothy G. Standish
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?
©2000 Timothy G. Standish
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
©2000 Timothy G. Standish
Creator is a Title of God
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Ecclesiastes 12:1 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 40:28
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 1:25 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 4:19
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.
©2000 Timothy G. Standish
Being Creator Makes God God
Isaiah 45:5-12
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.
©2000 Timothy G. Standish
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
©2000 Timothy G. Standish
God The Maker
Pslams 119:73
Thy hands have made me
and fashioned me: give me understanding,
that I may learn thy commandments.
Psalms 139:14
I will praise thee; for I
am fearfully and wonderfully made:
marvelous are thy works; and that my soul
knoweth right well.
I Corinthians 12:18
But now hath God
set the members every one of them in the
body, as it hath pleased him.
©2000 Timothy G. Standish
God’s Claim to be Designer
Genesis 1:26 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.
©2000 Timothy G. Standish
God Made A Plan First
Genesis 2:7 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 planning
and forethought - Design then fabrication.
©2000 Timothy G. Standish
Does life look designed?
©2000 Timothy G. Standish
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. 1998. Downers
Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, p 99.
©2000 Timothy G. Standish
Is The
Pattern
Random
Or
Designed?
Probability:
=2-256
=8.6 x 10-78
=0.0000000000
0000000000000
0000000000000
0000000000000
0000000000000
0000000000000
©2000 Timothy G. Standish
Is The
Pattern
Random
Or
Designed?
Probability:
=2-256
=8.6 x 10-78
=0.0000000000
0000000000000
0000000000000
0000000000000
0000000000000
0000000000000
©2000 Timothy G. Standish
Arguments for a Designer

Organisms look designed for at least three (3)
reasons:
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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.
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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 is hard to
produce by processes involving chance.
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.
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
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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 topsyturvy 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., NY, p 139.
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 Panda’s Thumb, Stephen J. Gould argues that life does not
look designed.
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)
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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”
Behe’s 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 mousetrap is an example of
an irreducibly complex device:

Staple
Trigger
Hammer
Board
Cheese
Bait holder
Spring
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.

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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©2000 Timothy G. Standish
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 tubules
– Protein spokes connecting tubules to maintain a constant
diameter
– Spoke heads
– Dynein arms that interact with adjacent microtubules
– A basal plate

Each of these components must be present if the
flagellum or cillium is to work.
©2000 Timothy G. Standish
Flagella Parts
Radial spokes
Microtubule
doublet
Dynein arms
Plasma
membrane
Central
microtubules
©2000 Timothy G. Standish
Are Little Jumps Possible?
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Cilia or flagella, missing any single part, will 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
Microtubules 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 microtubules, would
have to spontaneously come into existence simultaneously if
they were to increase fitness and be selected.
That seems like a big jump!
©2000 Timothy G. Standish
 Cilia
There Is More
and flagella represent the tip of the
iceberg 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.
©2000 Timothy G. Standish
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.”
©2000 Timothy G. Standish
 To
Evolution of the Eye
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
©2000 Timothy G. Standish
©2000 Timothy G. Standish