What Darwin Didn't Know - Part 3: Molecular Machines

This week I'm going to offer you a glimpse inside the cell where another unmistakable fingerprint of God can be discovered. I'm going to show you the amazing structures known as molecular machines. The machines operate with amazing efficiency and serve the cell as rotary motors, power sources, transportation and delivery systems, and as information systems, plus a host of other functions.

I love my 40 horsepower Mercury outboard motor. It's sleek, quiet, powerful, efficient, and reliable. It is a well designed machine whose function it is to power my 13 foot 1971 Boston Whaler. It has enough power to pull my son on a wake board or my daughter on a slalom ski. We have a blast, which is why I bought the motor in the first place.

I would never think that this motor evolved by chance. Someone had to come up with the idea for the outboard motor in the first place, design it, produce it, test it, and put it to use (in this case, bring it to market) Yet, as far life is concerned, that is what students are taught in high school biology textbooks, that life evolved from simple to complex in a gradual, step by step fashion over vast periods of time from non living matter (abiogenesis). All of this was directed by chance by a blind mechanism known as Natural Selection. Natural Selection's job is to take an existing system and to select for function.

In biology today, we know of many molecular "machines" which are quite similar to man made machines. Here's a picture of the bacterial flagellum motor:

What is most interesting is that, with regard to natural selection, the components of this motor must be assembled in proper sequence, and that if one of the parts is missing, there is no function and therefore no motor. All of the parts have to be there "all at once." Dr. Michael Behe coined this system as being "irreducibly complex." He states in his book, Darwin's Black Box, that it is implausible for natural selection to explain the existence of these molecular machines, since without any of the parts, natural selection would be attempting to select for function for a machine that has no function, which is to say that it would not select for function and you'd end up without a flagellum motor. Here is a video I found which explains Irreducible Complexity more clearly:

Here's an excellent article on the subject for further reading:

http://www.reasons.org/IncreasingtheTorqueonIntelligentDesign

I believe Darwin would have marveled if he could have discovered these irreducibly complex machines. They are remarkable in how much they resemble humanly engineered machines so it's easy to think that surely someone had to design them. My wish is that more people would come to know the problems with the Darwinian model, as 21st century science has opened up and exposed Darwin's black box, the cell. They are also remarkable because they cannot be explained by natural selection. These machines cannot be produced by random chance variations. If they could, then my 40 horsepower outboard motor could have been produced by a tornado which swept through the Bolton Landing, NY landfill and by chance assembled random parts into a functioning motor. No, there must be a designer, and these molecular machines are yet another fingerprint of the God of the Bible.

Join me next week as we look into another problem for the Darwinian model: the existence of information inside the cell.

Until then, may God bless your socks off.

Tom

- P.S. Here is an addendum from my fellow RTB apologist Kurt on the issue of Irreducible Complexity (IC) as the subject of being refuted by scientists in the Science Daily article as mentioned by one of the commentators of this posting:

My two main concerns are:

1.. Defining Behe's position too narrowly --- not representing Behe's
position fairly: Behe is actually much more open ended about "how" and
pretty public about it. He just doesn't leave God out somewhere in the
process of creating and directing Life, but he admits he doesn't have a
complete how/when picture. He admits we don't know specifically how; e.g.
his "we don't know", and so on.


2.. The over application of reductionism to Life: when we strip Life of
bio-info we no longer are talking about life. Without a bio-info change
mechanism we can't explain "step-by-step" for-or-against materialism, or
for-or-against ID. I develop this a bit more below because I think it is
strategically critical for RTB and this Forum.

Of the design processes I'm familiar with all exhibit the characteristic
"Step by Step"; e.g. design processes usually start with a goal, define
framework and limits, and so on. "Step by step", leading to a useful
function, is certainly as much evidence for design as it is for the
neo-Darwinian presumption. Using Dembski's arguments, which seem rigorous
and compelling, step-by-step to useful function [his "specified complexity"]
is stronger evidence for design than random accidents ["happy accidents"
;~)]. In the case of IC systems all the parts ["parts is parts"] have to be
there, and all the assembly information has to be there, so two incredible
"happy accidents" have to happen at the same time and then be "selected
for." As Robert Reid* argues: innovations are adaptive before selection so
selection doesn't explain where the information comes from. His logic is
compelling. And so on and on.

Since Life and IC systems are information systems I don't treat them as
[reduce them to] something else; i.e. they're chicken AND egg, parts AND
assembly instructions. An IC system, such as the rotating flagellum, can't
exist without information [again back to Well's point, but also to Dean
Kenyon]. In the case of the rotating flagellum the instructions include
[but are not limited to] instructions for creating the proteins, creating
the fixtures to assemble the device, and controlling the sequence of
assembly.

Per Shapiro, Reid, and many others, we don't have an adequate
understanding as to how Life changes bio-info that can explain innovations.

My general conclusion is that we can't [artificially or presumptively]
separate/reduce information from Life. Without information Life simply
"falls apart" to a material non-life level. [By "information" I'm referring
to bio-info in the robust sense used by Kuppers, Gitt, Yockey, and so on.]

It seems to me that separating info from life doesn't lead to explaining
Life. Even atheists/agnostics sense this. From Johnjoe McFadden, in
"Quantum Evolution" pg.11:

"Our failure to put the ingredients of life together and obtain anything
living suggests something must be missing from our list. Perhaps we should
start by examining why the mechanistic/reductionist approach has failed to
tackle life's fundamental questions: there is a paradox that lies at the
heart of the reductionist approach to biology. As one dissects the working
of any living creature, examining the detail of smaller and smaller
components, life itself seems to vanish before our eyes. Whilst we have no
difficulty in recognizing life in a whole animal, or indeed in one of its
cells; when we come to looking at the cell's insides, the question seems to
evaporate. Is a chromosome alive? What about a gene or DNA? Is a ribosome
alive, or a protein or an enzyme? The question seems to lose its relevance
when applied to these bits of life. The components of living cells,
stripped of contest, seem fundamentally no different to inanimate chemical
systems. Life seems to emerge only at higher levels. It is, to use modern
jargon, an 'emergent' phenomenon: one that cannot be entirely understood in
terms of its parts. As a means to explaining life, the unrelenting
reductionist approach is doomed to failure." [emphasis added]


I don't know if we'll ever see bio-info jump up from materialism as an
emergent phenomenon, but I'm siding with all the listed sources and
currently doubting it. Without that bio-info-changing mechanism, we can't
be definitive about "step-by-step" being evidence for a rational design
process our just happy accidents. I side with Design.

[please forgive typos --- it's just email ;~)]

Regards, Kurt