Synthetic Life Would Prove That Intelligent Design Works

Ours cells are anything but simple. Image courtesy of Mariana Ruiz (public domain).





Joel Kontinen

Some scientists have a strong bias against the supernatural. This became obvious during the recent Royal Society meeting New Trends in Evolutionary Biology. They were unwilling to accept real design even though evolutionary explanations do not work.

While Neo-Darwinian mechanisms cannot explain nanomachines or the other intricate features of the cell, for instance, participants were unwilling to acknowledge that genuine design is the one and only credible explanation of the wonderful integrated systems in biology.

This same bias is also seen in the attempt to create life in the lab.

The goal is to “prove pretty decisively that life is nothing more than a complicated chemical system” as Mark Bedau, a philosopher of science at Reed College in Portland, Oregon, puts it in a recent article in New Scientist.

But chemicals don’t turn into life.

Geneticists have made some remarkable breakthroughs. They have removed the DNA of a microbe and replaced it with the genome of another microbe.

That is a far cry from creating life.

Instead of modifying existing organisms, their real quest is to make life from scratch:

“A more ambitious effort starts with nonliving, chemical ingredients – sometimes familiar nucleic acids and lipids, but sometimes radically different structures such as self-assembling metal oxides. The researchers aim to coax these chemicals across the Darwinian threshold where they begin to replicate themselves heritably and evolve – the key criteria for calling the system alive. If this can be achieved, the implications would be enormous.”

They seem to be blind to the enormous amount of intelligent designing they are putting in their effort. Whereas the Darwinian watchmaker is absolutely blind, the attempt to make synthetic life is clearly teleological.

It has an explicit goal, and that is something that Darwinian processes cannot have. So, ironically, if they do manage to create synthetic life, they will simply prove that intelligent design works.

We shouldn’t forget that the naturalistic origin of life is wrought with severe problems.

Darwinians have suggested many solutions, such as water world, molecular midwives, RNA world etc., but they all require many lucky turns of events and none of them works.

Moreover, complexity does not increase gradually and spontaneously.

Source:

Holmes, Bob. 2016. The world in 2076: Human-made life forms walk the earth. New Scientist (16 November).

Medicine Nobel for Intelligent Recycling in Our Cells

Autophagy. Image courtesy of eb billard, Public Domain.




Joel Kontinen

Humans did not invent recycling. We see it in the life cycle of a butterfly. An intelligent process uses the moth’s cells to build an entirely different creature – a butterfly.

And our cells do something similar. They break down content that is no longer useful and instead of throwing it away, use it to repair existing cells or build new ones.

This year’s Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine has been awarded to Yoshinori Ohsumi, a professor at the Tokyo Institute of Technology, for his work on the mechanisms of autophagy.

Autophagy refers to self-eating. It is a combination of two Greek words, auto, ‘self’ and phagein, ‘to eat’. New Scientist gives us some background facts:

”Autophagy was first proposed as a concept in the 1960s, when it was observed that a cell can destroy its own contents by packaging it up into membranes called vesicles that are transported to a recycling part of the cell where it is degraded. This process rapidly provides fuel for energy and building blocks for the renewal of cell components.”

Professor Ohsumi discovered that authophagy does more than this. In an interview conducted in 2012, he said:

“As research into autophagy has expanded, it has become clear that it is not simply a response to starvation. It also contributes to a range of physiological functions, such as inhibiting cancer cells and aging, eliminating pathogens and cleaning the insides of cells.”

Autophagy is not the only intelligent process we have for getting rid of cells that are no longer useful but can cause harm by their longevity. There’s another one that’s called apoptosis or programmed cell death.

In 2002 the researchers who identified genes that control it were awarded the Nobel Prize in Medicine for their discovery.

In recent years, several Nobel prizes have been awarded to researchers who have shown how wonderfully our cells are designed. In 2009, for instance three ribosome researchers shared the Nobel prize in Chemistry.

Source:

Thomson, Helen. 2016. Medicine Nobel Prize goes to discovery of how our cells recycle. New Scientist (3 October).

Quality Control in Our Cells Speaks of Intelligent Design

New research found quality control in The endoplasmic reticulum (ER) shown here as (2) and (3). Image courtesy of Magnus Manske, Wikipedia.




Joel Kontinen

In real life, we would tend to associate quality control with something that has been designed for a purpose. This would also apply to the minuscule scale of the cell, which after all is full of amazing, almost miraculously tiny motors.

A new paper by researchers at the Centre for Genomic Regulation (CRG) highlights the quality control that exists in the cell.

According to a CRG news release:

“In a paper published today in Science, CRG researchers describe a new protein quality control system in the inner nuclear membrane.

The new system has two main functions, to eliminate misfolded proteins and to protect the nucleus from accumulating mislocalised (or ectopic) proteins. This may be especially relevant in non-dividing cells such as neurones.”

The brief news release makes frequent use of the term quality control. What is missing is any explicit or implicit reference to random Darwinian mechanisms.

Source

A new quality control pathway in the cell. Centre for Genomic Regulation. 18 September 2014.

Nobelist Ada Yonath: The Architecture of the Ribosome is Ingeniously Designed

The ribosome. Image courtesy of Wikipedia.





Joel Kontinen

The ribosome is tiny, measuring only 20 nanometres (a nanometre is one billionth of a metre), but without it there would be no protein synthesis and thus no life.

In 2009 three ribosome researchers shared the Nobel prize in Chemistry. Recently, Ada Yonath, who was one of them, repeated what she had said in her Nobel lecture:

”The architecture of the ribosome is ingeniously designed.”

Yonath is an evolutionist, but she cannot deny intelligent design.

Source:

Yonath, Ada. 2009. Hibernating bears, antibiotics and the evolving ribosome.

Intelligent communication in our cells

Joel Kontinen

Long before we had the first computer, our cells already used nanotechnology to communicate with their environment and with other cells.

Recently, Developmental Cell published a paper on how skin cells organise their inner structure in response to signals from their environment.

According to ScienceDaily, ” ’Cells react to changes in their environment very rapidly. To do this, cells need to have their signaling machinery at the right place at the right time’ says Sara Wickström, a researcher from the Max Planck Institute of Biochemistry.”

Researchers at the Max Planck Institute identified the mechanism that microtubules specialised in inter-cellular transportation use to move proteins to different places in response to information that they obtain from their environment and other cells.

This brief video animation produced by Creation Ministries International describes the function of microtubules.



Sounds like intelligent design.

Source:

Protein Highways Keep Tissues Organized. ScienceDaily.20 October 2010.

A journey inside a cell

Joel Kontinen

Protein synthesis is not the product of chance but the digital information coded in DNA directs it. This brief video produced by the Discovery Institute shows that the cell has been designed to function intelligently.



The apostle Paul wrote in Romans (1:20), ”God's invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature — have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made.”

A tiny motor that never gets tired

Joel Kontinen

Even when we sleep, our cells do not rest. Recently, Physorg.com reported on a discovery that features a tiny nano motor that produces ATP or adenosine triphosphate.

ATP has a vital task in energy production in cells. We might compare it to petrol (or gas, if you prefer) that a car needs. Our cells need adenosine triphosphate in order to function.

According to Physorg,

”ATP synthases are among the most abundant and important proteins in living cells. These rotating nano-machines produce the central chemical form of cellular energy currency, ATP (adenosine triphosphate), which is used to meet the energy needs of cells. For example, human adults synthesize up to 75 kg of ATP each day under resting conditions and need a lot more to keep pace with energy needs during strenuous exercise or work. The turbine of the ATP synthase is the rotor element, called the c-ring. This ring is 63 A in diameter (6.3 nm, or 6.3 millionths of a millimeter) and completes over 500 rotations per second during ATP production.”

The speed is really incredible. The tiny rotor completes 5,000 rotations in the time the world’s fastest man runs 100 metres.

Recently Thomas Meier of Max-Planck Institute and colleagues found out that cells use the water in nano rotors in converting power to a form that it can use more easily.

ATP synthesis speaks clearly of intelligent design. Already the first cell needed it. It can in no way have evolved through random processes.




Source:

Cells use water in nano-rotors to power energy conversion. Physorg. com. 3 August 2010. http://www.physorg.com/news200047448.html

Super-intelligent molecules or old speculations of the origin of life?

Michelangelo: The Creation of Adam. Image courtesy of Wikipedia. In the Darwinian scenario, there is no need of the Creator since super-intelligent molecules are assumed to be capable of creating life.



Joel Kontinen

”Four billion years ago, a number of molecules organised themselves in water, the true cradle of life. Here they formed chemical groups capable of generating true copies of themselves (self-reproduction). As a result of minor errors of assembly, more effective groups appeared and became dominant species (evolution).”

This is how Andre Brack, who is a biophysicist, outlines the origin of life in Unesco’s newsletter A World of Science. The scenario is neither credible nor possible but it is nonetheless a typical example of Darwinian storytelling.

Charles Darwin assumed that life began in a warm little pond. Brack repeats an old tradition that fails to take into account the complexity of the cell.

By using the ”just add water” strategy one might be able to make chicken noodle soup, provided one has all the necessary ingredients but producing a living cell is a much more complicated achievement. Brack’s super-intelligent molecules would easily become honorary members of Mensa.

Michael Behe, Professor of Biochemistry at Lehigh University, has a much more realistic view of the cell as Brack: The cell is full of molecular machines and it could not have come about by Darwinian mechanisms.





Source:

Brack, Andre. 2009. Are we alone? A World of Science 7 (1), 4.

The Best Evolution Book of Darwin’s Year Shows That Darwinism Does Not Work

Joel Kontinen



The Times Literary Supplement has chosen Dr. Stephen C. Meyer’s Signature in the Cell: DNA and the Evidence for Intelligent Design (HarperCollins) as one of the best books of the year.

The book was chosen by Thomas Nagel, a philosopher at the University of New York, who says he is an atheist. Dr. Meyer’s book shows that the cell is so sophisticated that Darwinian mechanisms cannot explain its origin. It speaks of intelligent design.

Darwinism cannot explain the origin of genetic information.

The Times Literary Supplement (TSL) is perhaps the most prestigious literary magazine in Europe. Each year, it announces its list of ten best books. Initially, the TLS was published as a supplement of The Times. Since 1914 it has been an independent magazine.

Although we have celebrated Darwin’s double anniversary this year, pro-evolution books have failed to win any awards.

Amazon has also chosen Signature in the Cell as one of the best books of the year.

Source:

Books of the Year 2009. Timesonline (25 November)
http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/the_tls/article6931364.ece