[00:00:07] Speaker A: Welcome to ID the Future, a podcast about intelligent design and evolution.
[00:00:14] Speaker B: Hello, this is Jonathan Wells for ID the Future.
I'm here today with Marcos Eberlin. Marcos is a member of the Brazilian Academy of Sciences and holds a PhD in chemistry from the University of Campinas.
After postdoctoral work at Purdue, he founded the Thompson Mass Spectrometry Laboratory and it grew into a highly distinguished lab and supervises, has supervised some 200 graduate and postdoctoral students, scientists who today work as researchers and professionals all around the globe. The former president of the International Mass Spectrometry foundation and winner of the prestigious Thompson Medal in 2016, Dr. Eberlin is recognized worldwide as one of the most productive mass spectrometrists ever, having published close to 1000 scientific articles.
So, Marcos, welcome.
[00:01:11] Speaker A: Oh, it's a pleasure to talk to you about the book and my experience with foresight.
[00:01:20] Speaker B: Before getting into the book itself, I noticed that there are some very glowing endorsements of it. Three of them from Nobel Prize winners. Would you like to say anything about those?
[00:01:31] Speaker A: Oh, yeah. The book has received endorsements from three Nobel laureates, one from chemistry, physics and medicine.
And this seems to be unique. I myself never read a book with such high quality of endorsements.
And this is also extraordinary if you consider that people tend to believe that all scientists, at least the well qualified scientists, they are all evolutionists. Yet three Nobel Laureates read my book, were confronted by the evidence and dared to publicly endorse the book. That's amazing, isn't it? And it shows that the message from the book is really strong, that the evidence are speaking loudly.
I'm really glad that we got those endorsements.
[00:02:27] Speaker B: So, Marcos, why is the idea of foresight so important to you in origins science?
[00:02:35] Speaker A: Well, Jonathan, when you study life and the universe also you see there are solutions and those solutions are there to solve really big problems.
And then when we see those solutions, we wonder, well, could evolution have provided those solutions?
So you start to look at the solutions and to look for mechanisms that could provide those solutions in a gradual fashion, step by step.
And foresight is so important because. Because when we study those solutions at the molecular level, we see that those solutions should be there from the very beginning.
There's no way that life or the universe could wait for those solutions to appear.
The problems would demand those solutions right away. There is no way for waiting for those solutions to gradually evolve, to gradually start to solve the problems.
So somebody had to look at the system, to see the system working and to predict that in the future those systems would show some really Bad problems and would demand solutions right away. And that's what foresight is so important.
A mine.
A mind should predict those problems, should also provide those solutions at the very first moment that the problems appeared.
So there's no way for a gradual evolution of the solutions that solve so many crucial problems in life.
And what is the consequence of that discovery? We discovered then that the mind is essential for life and for the universe to work to function properly. So there is a really big implication for the origin of life.
[00:04:44] Speaker B: Marcos, in your first chapter, you talk about cell membranes. Now, obviously, cells can't exist without membranes, but I've read various theories that membranes could form, you know, just spontaneously before life began, and then certain molecules like DNA and RNA could get in those membranes, and that would be the beginning of life.
Why is that not as simple as it sounds?
[00:05:12] Speaker A: Well, Jonathan, when we look at the membranes and when we start to study the way they function, we discover that those simple membranes that evolutionists have proposed serve no good for life.
They fail to provide all the features that a cell membrane should have at the very first moment that they start to work as a cell membrane.
Because it's not just the isolation that the membranes provide.
When you look at the molecules that make those membranes, you see that they make a barrier.
And that barrier prevents some types of molecules for entering the cell.
The membrane.
It does not only isolate life, it does not only protect life, but those membranes should allow some molecules to get in and out.
And then you need gates that would dock to those membranes, would land to those membranes, and stay there in the very stable way, firm way. So you need gates, doors to open and to close.
And this is the most crucial problem for the cell membranes, the permeation problem.
So those membranes that evolution have proposed, they are not able to support those gates.
And this is a really important fixture that should be planned. Somebody should look at those membranes and see the need for permeation, see the need for the gates, should also see the need for resistance, mechanical resistance to those membranes.
And everything together should be there from the very first time that the membrane starts to work as a cell membrane.
You are not able to evolve it gradually because all those functions should be there from the very beginning. So that's why the cell membranes are made of phospholipids, because they have all these properties that I just talked about.
Resistance, isolation, and also the ability to hold those gates, the molecular gates that would allow nutrients, for instance, to get in and out, would allow water to go in and out.
So very specialized molecules like the phospholipids that we have in our cells are essential for the very beginning.
And not just one type of phospholipids.
We see now in the cell membranes that we have many different types of phospholipids, and they work in synchrony to allow the membranes to have special properties.
So you need a cocktail of phospholipids, specialized membranes, from the very beginning.
So that's why a mind is required to isolate the cell. So foresight is needed from the very beginning. A gradual evolution of membranes should not explain how cells started to work as functional cells. And only foresight explains how these membranes were made at the first time life started in this planet.
[00:08:58] Speaker B: In your discussion about membranes, you, you say that not only is foresight necessary, but I'm going to read a sentence from your book. If you were to bid this demanding, multifaceted job out to the most technologically advanced engineering firms in the world, their top engineers might either laugh in your face or run screaming into the night. The requisite technology, apart from the foresight, is far beyond our most advanced human knowledge.
[00:09:27] Speaker A: Well, that's true, because the task of building those membranes is extraordinary.
It takes a lot of engineering, mechanical engineering, chemistry. You have to select the right molecules. You have to put on those molecules different properties, like a polar head that would love water and an apartment polar tail that would, on the other hand, hate water.
And this balancing of properties between hating and loving water is essential for the membrane. And also you have to tune for the physical, chemical properties of those molecules. And then one way to do it is by placing double bounds on the tail so you can click the tails and flip it a little bit.
And also, after doing all of these, you have to make those double layers of molecules stable as a function of ph and temperature.
And then you have to have a sensor for the ph and temperature.
So the information coming from those sensors would tell you how to change the composition of the phospholipids, to change the amount of double bonds and also the length of the carbon chains.
So it's a lot of chemical and mechanical properties that you have to balance, to fine tune at once to get a stable membrane, a resistant membrane, mechanically and chemically resistant.
So is there anybody there willing to do this? This is a tremendous task that only a very intelligent mind could handle.
Everything should be planned in advance. The filter should be shaped from those molecules to work as the cell membrane. Otherwise life would never start on this planet.
[00:11:40] Speaker B: What about all those people who say that science only considers material causes and that what you're talking about is not science.
[00:11:49] Speaker A: Well, Jonathan, I have a different view of science.
My definition of science is not restricted by natural causes.
I think that science should only consider one type of cause.
Causes that are supported by evidence, causes that are supported by data.
When we take science as such, a science that is looking for causes that are supported by evidence, we are not limited any longer by this biased definition of science.
So then we are free to look for the truth for the cause that really could have started life on this planet.
So this is the science that I like to do, this is the science that I like to play with, was by using this kind of definition of science and by doing this type of science that I decided in my career to consider the alternative of foresight for the solutions that I see in life, so many of them.
And when we consider foresight, we see that foresight is by far, by far the best explanation for many solutions in life, in the universe.
That's our duty as a scientist. We should follow the evidence wherever it leads.
And when we do it, foresight is so clear, is so evident that we are forced to accept it as the best evidence for life in the universe.
[00:13:42] Speaker B: Thank you, Marcos. I have been speaking with distinguished Brazilian scientist Marcos Eberlin.
I want to thank you, Marcos, for what you've told us and let people know that they can buy your book
[email protected] discoveryinstitutepress.com foresight or you can get it on Amazon for ID the future, this has been Jonathan Wells. Thanks for listening.
[00:14:14] 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.
[00:14:43] Speaker B: Sam.
