Tag Archives: intelligent design

Intelligent design and the true nature of reality

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Venus Flytrap Takes a Bite Out of Darwinism. Watch only if you can bear a true horror story direct from nature. No modern film would go to this kind of story since for the fly, there is no happy ending, even if some do get away. Not to mention that Darwinian theory cannot possibly provide a mechanism through which the Venus Fly Trap could have evolved since the necessary combination of the fly trap along with the ability to gain nutrition from flies defies explanation. Each half is purposeless without the other, and the independent but simultaneous evolution of each is impossible.

On a new episode of ID the Future, Brazilian Scotsman Andrew McDiarmid reads from Scottish Brazilian chemist Marcos Eberlin’s recent book Foresight: How the Chemistry of Life Reveals Planning and Purpose. In this excerpt, the distinguished scientist highlights the challenge the Venus flytrap poses for evolutionary theory. Download the podcast or listen to it here.

Dr. Eberlin, the former president of the International Mass Spectrometry Association, describes the problem: The Venus flytrap, like all carnivorous plants, had no use for its insect-trapping function unless it also had an insect-digesting function. And vice versa. Did they really both evolve together? And how, when there would be no functional advantage along much of the evolutionary pathway to the sophisticated finished system? Finally, how did this “evolutionary miracle” also happen in four other carnivorous plant genera?

If you watched the video, you can’t say I didn’t warn you.

Debating intelligent design

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If the intelligent design issue interests you, there’s a debate at The American Spectator between Stephen Meyer and John Derbyshire that you might have a look at. Meyer is at the centre of this issue on the ID side. Derbyshire is a science man who thinks that whatever a scientific community concludes is the best possible answer you can have at any moment in time.

First there’s Steve Meyer. This is typical of the approach he takes:

In Darwin’s Doubt, I show that the number of possible DNA and amino acid sequences that need to be searched by the evolutionary process dwarfs the time available for such a search—even taking into account evolutionary deep time. Molecular biologists have long understood that the size of the ‘sequence space’ of possible nucleotide bases and amino acids (the number of possible combinations) is extremely large. Moreover, recent experiments in molecular biology and protein science have established that functional genes and proteins are extremely rare within these huge combinatorial spaces of possible arrangements. There are vastly more ways of arranging nucleotide bases that result in non-functional sequences of DNA, and vastly more ways of arranging amino acids that result in non-functional amino-acid chains, than there are corresponding functionalgenes or proteins. One recent experimentally derived estimate places that ratio—the size of the haystack in relation to the needle—at 1077non-functional sequences for every functional gene or protein. (There are only something like 1065 atoms in our galaxy.)

And this is from Derbyshire who is not a frontline biologist but then none of them will enter into such debates. And while he is on the nay side of this debate, after quite a bit of skirting around the issue, if you ask me, he seems to concede the main point. I would say that he has gone a long way from what he might originally have hoped to conclude:

The problem of Mind has vexed philosophers for at least as long as the Demarcation Problem. Is Mind a part of nature, or outside nature? Since the only minds we know of are intimately attached to brains—organs with a fairly well-understood phylogeny and ontogeny—it seems that a naturalistic explanation of Mind ought to be forthcoming, but no-one has come up with one that has received general acceptance.

So the question is open, and for all we know it may be that Mind is outside nature. In that case, the kinds of interactions between Mind and nature that ID talks about can’t be ruled out.

“Mind is outside nature” practically concedes the entire ground. Thomas Nagel, atheist and man of the philosophical left if ever there’s been one, in his Mind and Cosmos has almost on his own made the notion of a separate creation of our independent minds a respectable point of view which Derbyshire mirrors in his own presentation.

Evolution by natural selection is just incredible

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Just look what they’ve turned up now: “Biology is capable of evolving functional mechanical gears“.

Through a combination of anatomical analysis and high-speed video capture of normal Issus movements, scientists from the University of Cambridge have been able to reveal these functioning natural gears for the first time. The findings are reported in the latest issue of the journal Science [abstract].

The gears in the Issus hind-leg bear remarkable engineering resemblance to those found on every bicycle and inside every car gear-box. Each gear tooth has a rounded corner at the point it connects to the gear strip; a feature identical to man-made gears such as bike gears – essentially a shock-absorbing mechanism to stop teeth from shearing off.

The gear teeth on the opposing hind-legs lock together like those in a car gear-box, ensuring almost complete synchronicity in leg movement – the legs always move within 30 microseconds of each other.

Amazing. It’s almost as if someone had designed it. I also saw this the other day which was even more startling:

A paper by a dozen German biologists, while discussing new findings about an ammonium ion transporter, includes descriptions of the many actions that occur when the Venus flytrap snaps shut on an insect.

The traps open wide to the environment, exposing trigger hairs and attractive red leaves.

Electrical action potentials are established for the trigger hairs on the inner leaf surface.

The digestive glands remain quiescent till activated. Abscisic acid regulates their sensitivity, but is balanced by 12-oxo-phytodienoic acid (OPDA), which makes them more sensitive to touch.

A trigger hair on the inner leaf is touched. If only one is touched, nothing happens.

A second touch after a short delay, or touch of a second trigger hair, begins a cascade of events.

Anion channels open. The action potential collapses, activating the motor center.

Vascoelastic energy snaps the trap shut in a fraction of a second.

If the triggering substance was not an animal, the trap re-opens after a short period.

Escape movements by the trapped animal triggers synthesis of a touch hormone, and acidifies the trap.

The trap edge hairs wrap more tightly around the edges, preventing escape.

The trap seals hermetically around the prey like a “green stomach,” exposing it to densely packed glands and chlorine ions.

OPDA stimulates production of jasmonic acid, which triggers the glands to secrete an acidic cocktail with more than 20 ingredients, including chitinases to dissolve the saccharides of the exoskeleton, proteases to dissolve the proteins, nucleases to dissolve the nucleic acids, lipases to dissolve the fats, and phosphatases to isolate the phosphates. These only digest the prey, not the leaf. The proteins are hydrolyzed into their constituent amino acids.

The amino acid glutamine is deaminated into ammonium, NH4+.

Genes to make an ammonium transporter are activated, depending on the action of touch hormones and elicitors, so as to adapt to varying, prey-derived ammonium sources.

The cell membrane becomes depolarized, ready to accept ammonium, even though it is not activated by pH. Only activation of the genes prepares the transporter for ammonium transport.

The ammonium transporter increases uptake of NH4+ from the prey into the plant cells, satisfying the need for nitrogen in the nutrient-poor soils of the plant’s habitat. It is described as “a voltage-dependent high-affinity NH4+ transporter optimised for NH4+ uptake at the membrane potential of gland cells.” Counteracting the acidification of the trap, the transporter can “serve to counter the depolarising effects of electrogenic NH4+ uptake and help to maintain intracellular pH homeostasis.”

“At the same time, progressive acidification of the trap digestive fluid will allow optimal digestion of a wide range of protein and other substrates.” If the pH drops below 3, additional digestive enzymes are synthesized to benefit from the additional NH4+ provided by the insect’s haemolymph.

Upon successful completion of the digestive cycle, the trap re-opens, and action potentials are set up for the next capture.

The world is a mystery but some possibilities are more possible than others, much more possible.