Intelligent Design

How to recognize the signature of (past) intelligent action https://reasonandscience.catsboard.com/t2805-how-to-recognize-the-signature-of-past-intelligent-action Claim: Herbert Spencer:  “Those who cavalierly reject the Theory of Evolution, as not adequately supported by facts, seem quite to forget that their own theory is supported by no facts at all.” Reply: Contrasting and comparing “intended” versus “accidental” arrangements leads us to the notion of design. We have extensive experience-based knowledge of the kinds of strategies and systems that designing minds devise to solve various kinds of functional problems. We also know a lot about the kinds of phenomena that various natural causes produce. For this reason, we can observe the natural world, and living systems, and make informed inferences based on the unraveled and discovered evidence.  A physical system is Read More ›

Review: J. W. Thornton (2022): Simple mechanisms for the evolution of protein complexity https://reasonandscience.catsboard.com/t2706-main-topics-on-proteins-and-protein-synthesis#9622 Proteins are tiny models of biological complexity: specific interactions among their many amino acids cause proteins to fold into elaborate structures, assemble with other proteins into higher-order complexes, and change their functions and structures upon binding other molecules.  Comment: Merriam-Webster describes the word “elaborate” as: “planned or carried out with great care, to produce by labor,Synonyms: Adjective: complex, complicated, detailed, fancy, intricate, involved, sophisticated Its hard to overlook the teleological aspect of the word. We can all agree that proteins are well-described as elaborate: Nucleopores for example have been described recently as “a massive complex of roughly 1,000 proteins that helps channel DNA instructions to the rest of the cell” 12 These complex Read More ›

Extreme genome repair, and remarkable morphogenesis by self-assembly point to design https://reasonandscience.catsboard.com/t2061p275-my-articles#9626 Extreme Genome Repair (2009): If its naming had followed, rather than preceded, molecular analyses of its DNA, the extremophile bacterium Deinococcus radiodurans might have been called Lazarus. After shattering of its 3.2 Mb genome into 20–30 kb pieces by desiccation or a high dose of ionizing radiation, D. radioduransmiraculously reassembles its genome such that only 3 hr later fully reconstituted nonrearranged chromosomes are present, and the cells carry on, alive as normal 1 T. Devitt (2014): John R. Battista, a professor of biological sciences at Louisiana State University, showed that E. coli could evolve to resist ionizing radiation by exposing cultures of the bacterium to the highly radioactive isotope cobalt-60. “We blasted the Read More ›

Peto’s paradox – how intelligent design solves it Marc Tollis (2017): In a multicellular organism, cells must go through a cell cycle that includes growth and division. Every time a human cell divides, it must copy its six billion base pairs of DNA, and it inevitably makes some mistakes. These mistakes are called somatic mutations (cells in the body other than sperm and egg cells). Some somatic mutations may occur in genetic pathways that control cell proliferation, DNA repair, apoptosis, telomere erosion, and growth of new blood vessels, disrupting the normal checks on carcinogenesis. If every cell division carries a certain chance that a cancer-causing somatic mutation could occur, then the risk of developing cancer should be a function of Read More ›

Let’s suppose there was a first Last Universal Common Ancestor (LUCA) or a small population of it. How did it overcome deleterious harmful mutations, in order not to go extinct?   M.LYNCH (2003): Although uncertainties remain with respect to the form of the mutational-effect distribution, a great deal of evidence from several sources strongly suggests that the overall effects of mutations are to reduce fitness. Indirect evidence comes from asymmetrical responses to artificial selection on life history traits, suggesting that variance for these traits is maintained by downwardly skewed distributions of mutational effects. More direct evidence comes from spontaneous mutation accumulation (MA) experiments in Drosophila, Caenorhabditis elegans, wheat, yeast, Escherichia coli, and different mutation accumulation (MA) experiments in Arabidopsis. All of these experiments detected downward trends in mutation Read More ›