Episode Transcript
[00:00:07] Speaker A: Welcome to ID the Future, a podcast about intelligent design and evolution.
[00:00:14] Speaker B: Greetings. I'm Andrew McDermott. Many of us were taught that life and the universe are a mindless accident, the blind outworking of laws governing cosmic, chemical, and biological evolution. But how does this official story compare to what the science actually says? Today, I'm back with Robert Walter, professor and chair of the department of biology at Belhaven University in Jackson, Mississippi. He served as co chair of the history and philosophy of Science section at the Mississippi Academy of Sciences and received his PhD in anatomy with a focus on neuroanatomy from Ohio State University.
Walter is co author of a new book published by Discovery Institute Press called Evolution and Intelligent Design. In a nutshell, Rob, welcome back.
[00:01:01] Speaker C: It's good to be here, Andrew.
[00:01:04] Speaker B: We left off in a previous episode talking about how irreducible complexity could cause real problems for Darwin's theory. Let's pick up from there. Why is this idea such a problem for darwinian evolution? And can you also remind our listeners the challenge in Darwin's own words that he mentioned in his writing?
[00:01:23] Speaker C: Sure. So the challenge that is, the test that Darwin presented that claimed that his theory would break down was that if it could be found that any complex organ existed which could not possibly have been formed by numerous, successive, slight modifications, then his theory would absolutely break down.
[00:01:45] Speaker B: Okay, so tell us about irreducible complexity and how that ties into it.
[00:01:51] Speaker C: Sure. So, irreducible complexity, as our audience is familiar with, is the idea that a system has multiple parts. They all must be present, arranged properly and functioning for the system to do its function. And natural selection only works on functioning or operating systems. It doesn't work on useless systems or non functioning systems. So the irreducibly complex system is not functional until it has all of its parts all arranged properly and all working to do the function of that system. Well, now, some of these parts could be fairly complicated, and so they may take a long time to evolve according to an evolutionary view. So as you're having all these separate parts accumulating, the system isn't functional. So natural selection can't work on this system to cause it to continue from generation to generation because the whole system isn't functional. You may make one part, and maybe that's a good part, and then you begin making another part. But maybe the first part deteriorates and maybe you make a third part and the second part deteriorates. There's just no scenario for explaining how all these parts would come together over time in a step by step manner to produce an overall functional system, and therefore, really, if irreducible complexity is true, it does cause Darwin's theory to break down.
[00:03:27] Speaker B: Okay, now we see irreducible complexity in the bacterial flagellum. Do we also see it in our own bodies?
[00:03:35] Speaker C: Yes, we do. And the way that I began formulating this in my mind occurred when I listened to an id the future podcast from 2017 done by Howard Glixman, where he spoke about the fact that oxygen is not very soluble in the blood. And that shocked me a little bit. I mean, I kind of knew that in general, but when I really thought about it, it was kind of amazing, in fact, that one of the most important functions of the blood is to carry oxygen, yet it's not very soluble in the blood. Now, specifically, what he's referring to is not very soluble in the fluid of the blood. So then how do we get enough oxygen? Well, he brought up the fact that we need a protein by the name of hemoglobin, which binds the oxygen. This hemoglobin is found in the red blood cells, and it allows blood to absorb a sufficient amount of oxygen. But hemoglobin by itself wouldn't do anything. You need two complete systems surrounding the hemoglobin to allow it to have a meaningful function. And those two systems are the cardiovascular and the respiratory system. And the average person is familiar with their own body systems. So I thought that maybe, as I would unpack this a little bit, that I could make it more understandable for the average audience, rather than complicated biochemical machines or complex signaling pathways.
[00:05:02] Speaker B: Well, tell us why this is important, this process, this system with oxygen.
[00:05:07] Speaker C: Sure. Our body cannot absorb oxygen through the skin and get it to all of the organs within our body. Okay, we're just too thick. So we need a very specialized transport system to carry the oxygen. So we have the cardiovascular and respiratory systems that cooperate to accomplish this. And many are familiar with some or all of their parts. The cardiovascular system has heart. It has large blood vessels, and then it has microscopic vessels called capillaries. The respiratory system has lungs, airways, and at the ends of the airways, these small sacs called alveoli. In addition, there has to be a specialized interface between the two systems, involving structures from each of them, specifically designed to enable exchange of oxygen from one system to the other. And hemoglobin is close to that interface on the cardiovascular side. And as soon as the oxygen gets through that interface, it gets picked up by the hemoglobin, and then it carried through the blood to the body.
Now, the thing about this system is it needs all of these parts in order to get the oxygen to the tissues.
If any of the parts aren't there, the system will fail and the tissues won't get the oxygen that they need. And without the oxygen, the mitochondria in our cells won't work. They can't produce ATP. The cells will swell and eventually die, killing the organism.
[00:06:42] Speaker B: That's a fascinating example. I hadn't actually heard of that one before.
Well, how do evolutionists try to get around the problem that irreducible complexity presents to their theory?
[00:06:53] Speaker C: Well, there's a number of things that I could say about it, but let me just focus on one main, one neutral evolution. That is that changes could occur, which are maybe they're good, maybe they're bad, but they don't really have any effect. Immediately, let me explain how this might work. Let's say that there's a gene and that gene gets duplicated, and that gene performs an important function. Well, the original copy of the gene can continue to carry out that function, but the duplicated copy could be modified, could be so called experimented on in a sense, and that extra copy changes could occur. Maybe some of them would be bad, but it's not that big a deal because you still have the main gene. But if some of them are good, then maybe they could have some adaptive value and lead to a new function. But this is really not a good way to try to get around irreducible complexity because there's a high energy cost. With duplicating the gene and then experimenting on one of the copies. It uses a lot of resources to maintain a nonfunctional gene, and organisms that try to do this will be at a disadvantage.
[00:08:09] Speaker B: Not to mention it sounds like an intelligent thing to do. Make a copy, set that aside, let it do its thing. I'll work on this copy. They might be taking some function of mind for granted there.
[00:08:20] Speaker C: Right, right. And there's a. There's a number of other things that I could say about that, even if it were possible to get something useful. But then there are many other things surrounding that. It's regulation, getting at the right place at the right time. There. There are lots of unanswered questions that can't just be assumed.
[00:08:39] Speaker B: Sure. Well, irreducible complexity represents the main thrust of your chapter in this book. Can you briefly address what other challenges you've mentioned in the chapter?
[00:08:50] Speaker C: Sure. I mentioned common descent, the idea that all the present day organisms evolved from common ancestors that trace back to a few original forms of life according to evolution. But that is very difficult to demonstrate. And in order to study common descent, you see relatedness among organisms. And so a particular feature would have to be selected. It might be genetic, it might be biochemical, it might be morphological, and that feature will then be used to construct a tree, a phylogenetic tree, tracing the ancestry from the original life forms all the way to the present day. And you could call that a tree of life diagram. The problem is that when you use one feature, let's say a particular gene, you get one tree of a certain pattern. When you do, let's say a protein, you might get a different tree. When you use morphology, you may get a different tree. So as it turns out, they've looked at lots of different features and for each feature that they look at, they get a different tree. So there are the order of hundreds of different trees out there for all the different features that they've looked at. And really what you want is to have one tree that shows the actual ancestry of living organisms, but they're having difficulty finding that tree. And so I think this is a problem for mainstream evolutionists because they lean heavily on common descent as their main source of evidence for evolution, but yet they can't really back it up with the tree of life.
[00:10:30] Speaker B: Yeah, that makes sense. Well, did you mention other challenges in the chapter or did you leave that to your co authors?
[00:10:38] Speaker C: No, I mentioned some other challenges. Natural selection operates variation. So as there's in the organism, some of those variations will be helpful and enable the organism to survive. So what's the source of those variations? Well, the most likely scenario is that it arises in the genetic code, that there's a change in the genetic code that produces a different protein, that may be an improved protein, that then provides some adaptive advantage.
But the problem when we think about information in this DNA, this genetic code, is essentially information. The problem when we think about information is that the origin and modification of information in a meaningful and improved way doesn't happen by accident. There's always an intelligence behind it. Let me give you an example from my own life. I'm a professor, so I'm often asked to write letters of recommendations for students. So I wrote a letter of recommendation for a student a year ago, and the student came back to me and said they wanted to resubmit the letter this year and so I needed to update it. So how do I update? I'm not going to just randomly add, remove or change letters and words in that letter. All right, I'm going to put some thought into it, some intelligence, do some study of background and things like that to update the letter. So improving information just is not consistent with this unguided, accidental process.
And so when we talk about information in the cell, there's no evidence that changes in any kind of step by step way can produce a detailed mechanism of how it would generate new or improved information. And I think this is the weakest link yet in all of evolution. But all of evolution is riding on it too.
[00:12:37] Speaker B: Yeah, they call it the grand narrative, but there's a, there's a lot of holes in there if you look closely. So in light of all these problems, why do evolutionists still hold on so tightly to their theory?
[00:12:52] Speaker C: I think that's a difficult thing to get at, and I think it's a complex combination of factors.
Honestly, they may think it's the best understanding of science out there, and often people become invested in a particular way of thinking and don't give it up easily. However, sometimes the factors that cause it to be held are not scientific, and this should be pointed out and challenged. Also, even if the factors are scientific that cause them to hold it, they should still be open to debate and willing to show how evolution stands up to a challenge. So I think that they should be a bit more open to discussion of alternatives.
[00:13:35] Speaker B: Yeah. And, you know, some of our colleagues have noticed, you know, a big gap between the official positioning of papers and research and institutions and then the private conversations, you know, amongst them and just the things that they're thinking about. I seem to think that they get held hostage sometimes. You know, they want to think outside the box, but the tenure and the publication money and the grant money seem to depend on holding fast to the party line.
[00:14:09] Speaker C: Right. Well, I do think there's kind of an intolerance for any consideration of alternatives or even criticism of evolution, which should not occur in science. Science should have a spirit of free inquiry where all ideas are welcomed and considered and weighed on their merits.
[00:14:26] Speaker B: Right. Well, we hope that it will get to that point slowly and surely. What direction would your future writings be taking then?
[00:14:36] Speaker C: Sure. I'm real interested in proteins. Id proponents have written a good bit on proteins, but I found that there are additional complex functions of proteins that I'd like to explore, and so I'm going to be looking into that a bit. Also, we talk about information, and as I already kind of hinted at, I think there are multiple sources of information in the cell other than the DNA, and those aren't as well understood. And so I'd like to try to unpack those. And I hope by studying these topics, it will generate ideas that form the basis for new research.
[00:15:12] Speaker B: Okay, well, some good things to look forward to there. Rob, I want to thank you for discussing these topics with us today and for your contribution to this new book.
[00:15:22] Speaker C: Sure, glad to do it.
[00:15:24] Speaker B: If listeners, you're looking for a brief, accessible introduction to the debate over evolution and intelligent design, this book is it. I like that it's written in plain language and that it includes references not only to scholarly works, but also helpful YouTube videos and other resources. Get your copy of evolution and intelligent design in a nutshell, in paperback or ebook format at online retailers like Amazon and Barnes and Noble. And as always, enjoy more episodes of this podcast on idthefuture.com or on your favorite podcasts platform.
For id the future, I'm Andrew McDermott. Thanks for listening.
[00:16:04] Speaker A: This program was recorded by Discovery Institute's center for Science and Culture. Id the Future is copyright Discovery Institute. For more information, visit intelligentdesign.org and idthefuture.com.
