Biologý's ‘Skeleton In The Closet’: The Broken Bones Of Origins Science

Robert Deyes writes:

Review Of Chapter 13 of Stephen Meyer's Signature in the Cell (Harper One, 2009), by Stephen Meyer, HarperOne Publishers.

I never would have suspected that the literary sensation Dr Seuss’ The Cat In The Hat Comes Back would be used to make a point about the devastating shortcomings of origin of life theories (1). But when I read one of the later chapters of Meyer’s Signature In The Cell which in one foul swoop discredited Hermann Muller’s fortuitous origins of DNA, Henry Quastler’s DNA self replication hypothesis and Manfred Eigen’s ideas on hypercycles I could not help but be fascinated by his use of this children’s classic in his exposition. Of course in their own unique ways each of these scientists became steadfastly convinced that they were onto something of great significance that would lead to fruitful avenues on the all important question of how life had begun. Muller drew inferences from his own work on viruses, in particular bacteriophages (‘bacteria eaters’), equating these simple organisms to “a gene that copies itself within the cell” (2). He envisioned these as being somehow analogous to primitive DNA floating around in the chemical-rich soup of the early earth (2). Quastler on the other hand suggested that polynucleotides could act as templates for replication through complementary base pairing (3). And Eigen chose to assume that ‘self-reproducing molecular systems’ involving RNA molecules and basic enzymes could somehow supply an early form of transcription and translation, later forming hypercycles that would have preceded the arrival of the earliest cells (4).

So how is the Cat in the Hat relevant? Crucial aspects of the above mechanistic propositions, writes Meyer, parallel the antics of our feline friend as he unwillingly redistributes the mess he has created in the house of his none-too-happy hosts. Origin of life scientists have similarly been trying for decades to “clean up the problem of explaining the origin of [biological] information” only to find that they have “simply transferred the problem elsewhere- either by presupposing some other unexplained sources of information or by overlooking the indispensable role of an intelligence” (1). And their modern day brethren, with the apparent sophistication of computer-housed evolutionary algorithms, have fared little better. Meyer’s unearthing of the reality behind Ev, for example, described by its author Thomas Schneider as “a simple computer program” that attempts to evolve the information content of DNA binding sites in a hypothetical genome, is a case in point (5). In Ev Schneider ‘specifies’ the sequence of these DNA binding sites and incorporates the code for the binding site ‘recognizer’ (protein) into the genome (5). The relative penalties for mis-binding or non-binding of the recognizer to sequences are pre-set into the program (5).

Read the rest (with references) here.

Books: Frank Turek on Signature in the Cell

Steven Meyer's Signature in the Cell (Harper One, 2009) seems to be waking people up to the basic stupidity of modern Darwinism. Here:

Most of Turek's column riffs, quite rightly, off "climategate":

“You mean science is not objective?” No, unless the scientists are, and too often they are not. I don’t want to impugn all scientists, but it is true that some of them are less than honest. Sometimes they lie to get or keep their jobs. Sometimes they lie to get grant money. Sometimes they lie to further their political beliefs. Sometimes they don’t intentionally lie, but they draw bad scientific conclusions because they only look for what they hope to find.

Misbehavior by scientists is more prevalent than you might think. A survey conducted by University of Minnesota researchers found that 33% of scientists admitted to engaging in some kind of research misbehavior, including more than 20% of mid-career scientists who admitted to “changing the design, methodology or results of a study in response to pressure from a funding source.” Think of how many more have done this but refuse to admit it! (The researchers said as much in their findings.)

Whether people believe in the Christian or Muslim or Hindu conception of God - design is a reality in our universe. The rest is just infighting. Not untrue or unimportant. But a row among people who have got the most basic principles right. From that, trueth may emerege.

If Turek has got that right, he has got something very important right. For example:

Dr. Stephen Meyer has written a fabulous new best-selling book addressing those questions called Signature in the Cell (Harper One, 2009) in the Cell. Having earned his Ph.D. from the University of Cambridge in the philosophy of science, Dr. Meyer is at the top of the science food chain. In our August 8th radio interview, he told me he’s been working on his 600+ page book—which isn’t short of technical detail—for more than a decade.

I am working my way through it, but so far I certainly consider it a worthy shelfmate to Bill Dembski's Design Inference and No Free Lunch and Mike Behe's Edge of Evolution.

Find out why there is an intelligent design controversy: