[00:00:04] Speaker A: ID the Future, a podcast about evolution and intelligent design.
Is the famous Panda's thumb evidence of unguided evolutionary processes? Or is it a masterpiece of engineering and the result of intelligent Design? Welcome to ID the Future. I'm your host, Andrew McDermott. Well, today, continuing my conversation with retired geneticist Dr. Wolf Eckhardt Lernick as we discuss his new paper reviewing the debate over the panda's thumb. Giant pandas have an elongated wrist bone, the radial sesamoid, that allows them to handle and eat bamboo with great dexterity. Some claim it's an imperfectly and inefficiently formed structure that is clear evidence of evolutionary processes at work.
Others call it one of the most extraordinary manipulation systems in the mammalian world and clear evidence of engineering.
So which is it? Well, that's the topic of our conversation today. Now, in case you don't know about Wolf Eckard Lernig, here is a few basics. Mathematician and ID theorist Granville Sewell has described Dr. Lernig as an intelligent design pioneer. That's because for over 50 years, Dr. Leunig has been offering robust criticism of Darwinian theory and advocating for intelligent design. He argued for intelligent Design in his 1971 Masters of Science thesis at the Free University of Berlin. His faculty advisor there, the Director of the Botanical Gardens and Botanical Museum of Berlin, had high praise for his thesis.
Finally, the director said, a master's thesis in which a young man turned turns decidedly against a sacred cow, Neo Darwinism, or the theory of descent in general, and demonstrates the sore points of a doctrine which for most minds is thought of not just as a theory, as a great synopsis, but as an impeccable and almost completely proven fact.
Wolf Eckard would go on to earn a PhD from the University of Bonn and work as a geneticist for over 25 years at the Max Planck Institute for Plant Breeding Research in Cologne. He has continued throughout his career, and now in retirement, to criticize Darwinism and promote intelligent design in his writings, several of which have been published in scientific journals. Dr. Leonig, welcome back.
[00:02:30] Speaker B: Thank you very much for having me.
[00:02:33] Speaker A: Oh, absolutely. It's a pleasure. Well, for those who haven't caught part one of this conversation, let's briefly recover and review what we've looked at. We started by discussing your scientific training and career as a botanist and how it prepared you to critique Darwinian claims and advocate for intelligent design. We looked at the blueprint of the panda's hand and the arguments for and against its design. We discussed the related debate between Bristol University bioengineer Stuart Burgess and City University of New York professor of Biology Nathan Lintz on the topic of whether the human wrist is a marvel of engineering or the product of unguided evolutionary processes. And we also talked in part one about the dual function of the panda's hand for walking as well as manipulation of its food of choice, which is yummy bamboo.
So those are some things we covered. Let's jump into a little more detail today as we review this very interesting and important controversy.
Well, Dr. Leonig, can you review for us the giant panda's hand and how it differs from other bears and what is the radial sesamoid?
[00:03:45] Speaker B: Yes, as mentioned in our first episode in the Panda, a thumb is visible on its forepaw which helps in holding bamboo in place for feeding the giant panda's paw as a digit similar to a thumb and five fingers. So six digits in all.
A thumb like digit which helps to hold bamboo while eating.
Although there are doubts concerning the simple homology interpretations in different sesamoid bones in various species, it is generally assumed that that the giant panda has an enlarged radial sesame bone. We humans do not have a corresponding radial sesame bone, at least not one which would be clearly identifiable consuming a bamboo diet. The enlarged bone assists in grasping bamboo.
Last time I tried to show this picture here and you see perhaps these fingers. This is the thumb, the pandas thumb and the other bears have only these five digits. And this one is the pandasum, this enlarged radial sesame. So in comparison to other bear species, the radial sesame is strongly enlarged.
It is the main bone in the formation of the panda thumb. And that special thumb has been cited for decades as a special proof for the theory of evolution. In fact, it has become an icon of evolution.
Darwinians have called it to be a crude structure built from an odd part, clumsy, highly inefficient, imperfect, suboptimal, an example of bad design. A mistake which no intelligent designer would ever have made and only evolution by mutations and natural selection could have produced.
Nevertheless, when these same biologists we are watching pandas alive, they, for example, like Davis and Gould, both originally involved with a bad design hypothesis, have confessed things like the following. Gould said, I was amazed by their dexterity and wondered how the scion of a stock adapted for running could use its hand so adroitly. In plain English, he was amazed, astonished, surprised that a member of the bear family could use his forefeet for both running and eating bamboo so perfectly. Dwight D. Davis said wrote, the skill and precision with which objects are grasped and manipulated by the feet is astonishing.
I have observed animals pick up small items like single straws and handle them with greatest precision.
Small discs of candy less than an inch in diameter were handled deftly and placed in in the mouth.
I may add that observing the pandas myself a long time at two different zoos, one zoo in the Netherlands, two bears at that time and the other in Belgium at that time five bears. But they had to give three bears that sent back to China in the meantime. And looking and studying them, observing them, I can only agree, one can only be amazed and astonished and surprised that a member of the bear family could use his feet for both running and eating bamboo so perfectly.
So is it just inefficient or is a dual or a double function perhaps rather a masterpiece of engineering.
By the way, I would like to add again to a little addition to our first episode that a so called career in biology does not necessarily prepare you to question orthodox Darwinism. On the contrary, it rather does everything to keep you away from questioning it. However, any intelligent open minded person can discover many facts to question orthodox neodym for himself.
[00:08:55] Speaker A: Yeah, I really appreciate that point.
You get that training which, which is supposed to reinforce the Darwinian claims and perspective. But just in doing the study that you will do as a biologist, you can figure out where Darwin and his theory went wrong and where it's not working. And you can make the claims that you didn't make just, just in the studying of biology.
[00:09:21] Speaker B: Yes, exactly. As is you can you become acquainted with many complex structures, irreducibly complex structures and many other structures which can hardly be happened by an action of many chances.
[00:09:43] Speaker A: Right. Well, Dr. Lernig, you have written a paper, a very helpful review paper about the panda's thumb controversy. And in that paper you, you refer to something called the optimal Panda principle. Can you explain what this principle suggests? In contrast to paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould's Panda principle? Does it imply that the panda is exactly as it should be for its specific lifestyle?
[00:10:11] Speaker B: Well, Stephen Jay Gould called his theory key point in three words, imperfection, proofs, evolution, the panda principle just focusing almost entirely on the punna thumb, disregarding almost all the rest.
So he was focusing and many other biologists do the same. Focusing on the isolated organ instead of regarding the context of the biological system as a whole to which it belongs.
Although the French biologist Cyril Barret still upholds Gould's Panda principle in his book, in his panda book of 2023, he came to the conclusion that the length of the thumb is optimal. In French Salon Guer? N'EST ni minimal nor maximal. Mais optimal. Neither minimal nor maximal, but optimal. Apart from a system of tightly linked anatomical parts, the functional complex with other bones, the tremendous development of radial sesamoid, the strongly enlarged scapholuna, the dominant basic bone for the radial seismomy, the carpus forearm articulation largely between the scapholuna and the radius, et cetera. There's also.
This was already detected. There is also a unique gut microbiome in giant pandas involved in protein metabolism.
Thus, not only the length of these bones is optimal, but the entire panda system for grasping, walking, climbing, as well as to inhabit in and living from large bamboo forests fulfilling major weighty and serious ecological tasks.
Recall please from our first session the following Pandas play an important role in the forest ecosystem where they live. Seeds and plant matter collects on their fur which is then deposited as they move throughout their habit. They also climb trees and swim, which further helps disperse the seeds.
Giant pandas help to keep their mountain forests healthy by spreading seeds in their droppings, which helps vegetation to thrive. The giant pandas forest habitat is also important for local people for food, income and fuel for cooking and eating. They also play a crucial role in regulating water flow. Interestingly, the pandas live in the mountain catchment areas of Yangtze and Yellow Rivers. The forests act as natural watersheds, helping to control water runoff, reduce soil erosion and maintain water quality, which over half a billion people depend on. If pandas were to go extinct, China's bamboo forests would greatly suffer since pandas help spread bamboo seeds that they pass in their feces. By spreading these seeds, they help bamboo plants who spread and grow. So considering all the different aspects of the panda's biology, instead of focusing on just one isolated anatomical structure, I would call it the optimally intelligently designed punnett system. Or in brief, the optimal. The optimal punnett principle. Exactly as a farsighted, ingenious genetic engineer would have considered and implemented it on all biological functions. So this is considering the entire system of the panda, how it lives, how it is designed, how it eats the digestive system and the many interesting facts which we find in the ecological system.
[00:14:33] Speaker A: And you know, to me the panda's thumb is, is a great argument for bringing the engineers together with the biologists. Because you can't expect a biologist who's been brought up on a reductionist, bottom up evolutionary framework to be able to look at the design inherent in the panda and in the panda's anatomy and you know, how it, how it works in its ecosystem and expect it, expect that person to, to come up with, you know, the actual things that are happening.
It's just not going to work, you know, with that sort of training that most biologists are getting. But if you put the engineers with the biologists, well then you can start looking at principles of engineering and top down design.
Well, as you note Dr. Leonig, Darwinists have described the Pandestam as crude, built from an odd part, clumsy, highly inefficient, imperfect, suboptimal. But you ask a very important question in your paper and that is this. If the panda's thumb is an embodiment of bad design, where are the evolutionists proposals of how it could have been designed better?
What would you say?
[00:15:48] Speaker B: Good question. It's a very good question.
I raised that question publicly twice at Evolution Use and Science Today in June and July 2024. I never received proposals for a better design by evolutionary biologists, nor have I never seen any such suggestions or proposals anywhere else.
[00:16:14] Speaker A: And yet it's a very good question, isn't it? They're quick to call it clumsy and suboptimal, but they don't really offer up much in the way of, well it should have been this way, you know, which is telling. Now Dr. Lunig, your specialty is genetics. So let's take a few minutes to delve into the genetic secrets of the giant panda to see what light it sheds on the debate over the panda stump. First, panda genomes are packed with genetic variations, millions of them. Can you tell us about this and what kinds of questions it raises about how evolution works?
[00:16:47] Speaker B: Well, yes, I like to speak about that.
Giving some quotations. Lee et al. In their nature paper of 2010 stated that we identified more than 2.7 million heterozygous single nucleotide polymorphisms in the diploid genome. Well, single nuclear. What is a single nuclei polymorphism? It is abbreviated SNP, SNPs or plural SNP. And SNP is a germline substitution of a single nucleotide at a specific position in the genome.
And now such enormous numbers of nucleotide polymorphisms have been detected in almost all organisms. The panda is no exception on this general rule. For example, concerning other bears, Cronin et al. Wright we identified 13.8 million single nucleotide polymorphism polymorphism SNPs in three species, polar bear, brown bear and black bears, aligned to the polar bear genome.
And we of course are always interested also in human beings. As humans we are.
Shoahan et al. 2022 mentioned. On average there are 84 point million single nucleotide polymorphisms in the human genome. Now the captivating point for Neo Darwinism now is this.
These enormous numbers of SNPs and also additional genetic variations clearly refute the synthetic theory of evolution or Neo Darwinism which claimed that all changes, including those at the molecular level, molecular genetic level, were controlled and directed by selection.
Important point. The number of SNPs in the millions in humans alone exceeds anything that could have even been imagined in terms of variation in pre molecular times and even up until a few years ago. This is a diversity that no amount of strict selection could even come close to controlling. In stark contradiction to Darwin and the Neo Darwinians that quote Darwin, natural selection is daily and hourly scrutinizing throughout the world every variation, even the slightest. Rejecting that which is bad, preserving and adding up all that is good. Though this is simply impossible for these millions of SNPs and many other genetic molecular variations.
[00:20:03] Speaker A: So you have evidence of genetic diversity in these animals, but that's not answerable through a Darwinian mechanism is what you're saying.
[00:20:12] Speaker B: Yes, yes. I would like to add that in 1968 Kimura, the Japanese famous geneticist, proposed the neutral theory of molecular evolution which states that the majority of amino acid substitutions in evolution must be neutral with respect to natural selection and due to random genetic drift and reproduction.
Similarly, Kimura 1980. I believe that the traditional paradigm of Neo Darwinism needs drastic revision. However, the renowned professor Dennis Noble from Oxford states that a revision is not enough. He said clearly and unmistakably this theory has to be replaced. So the majority of these mutations, it is over 99.999% now falls into the 100% completely neutral range. It is not correct that natural selection has, as we have just quoted, daily and hourly scrutinizing throughout the world every variation, even the slightest, and so on. It is simply wrong to, to tell the the public such things.
[00:21:46] Speaker A: Yeah, giving natural selection too much credit. Well, what about the specific genes that make pandas unique, particularly those involved in their bamboo only diet and their somewhat unusual metabolism. Tell us about the genes that make pandas unique and why they're important.
[00:22:04] Speaker B: Well, yes, it's, that's very interesting here et al report in 2020 that giant pandas have several families of amplified genes among which salivary secretion, pancreatic secretion, insulin secretion and parathyroid hormone synthesis secretion and function pathways may be important for the digestion and adaptation of giant pandas to bamboo. The amylase gene copy number of a giant panda is higher than that of the genomes of the carnivores which we queried, which is consistent with the fact that the giant panda eats mainly hemicellulose and starchy materials, so amylase is for digesting starchy materials. They also mentioned that they found 93 genes which they say were found to be under positive selection.
Now how do they know that they were under positive selection? In the present study these 93 genes were interpreted in all the cases the authors interpreted in agreement with other evolutionists, an excess of non synonymous differences in genes as mutations due to the action of positive selection. This is a retrospect interpretation of the gene sequence which they discovered because it had so many non synonymous substitutions. However, the authors emphasize that the function of these genes in giant pandas need to be further verified.
The authors also say that the giant pandas dietary habits have shifted dramatically to a strict bamboo diet. And then they admit of course, as every intelligent person will admit, the reasons for the changes of the diet of giant pandas are still largely unknown because you have no evolutionary theory who could convincingly explain such a shift of the normal bear diet. Although even normal bears normal I mean brown bear, Malay bear and others eat a lot of plant material, they are not strictly carnivorous. Even 90% of their nourishment consists of plant material in many cases, except of course, except the polar bear. Deng et al have emphasized in 2023 that the unique gut microbiome of giant pandas involved in protein metabolism contributes to the host's dietary adaptation to bamboo. And they propose that their findings suggest that Streptococcus alactolyticus is an important player in the gut microbiota that contributes to the giant pandas dietary adaptation by more involvement in protein rather than in carbohydrate metabolism. But it's a new aspect that they have a unique gut microbiome which helps to digest proteins.
[00:26:00] Speaker A: Now you mentioned the discovery of over 2,500 panda specific genes. Tell us about orphan genes and why these genes unique to pandas and no other animal can be particularly insightful.
[00:26:13] Speaker B: Well, what are orphan genes?
Answer Orphan genes abbreviated orphans or Taxonomically restricted genes. TRGs are genes that lack detectable a detectable homologue outside of a given species or lineage.
Quotation of the Wikipedia to quote from a recent Bloz article of 2023 with the numerous genomes sequenced today, it has been revealed that a noteworthy percentage of genes in a given taxon of organism in the final genetic tree of life do not have orthologous sequences. In other Texas.
These sequences are commonly referred to as orphans.
They're found as single occurrences in a single species or as taxonomically restricted genes TRGs when found at higher taxonomic levels.
An example Richard bucks reported in 2016 the this Week in Nature I and my co authors published the ash tree genome.
Within it we found 38,852 protein coding genes.
Of these 1/4, 9604 were unique to the ash tree and they made that comparison with 10 other coffee, grape, loplodypine, monkey flower, poplar, tomato, umbrella, garabidopsis, barometic and bladderworms. Orphan genes are found every time a new genome is sequenced.
Their ubiquity has been one of the biggest surprises of genomics over the last 20 years is still Baxter generally between 10 and 30% of orphan genes are given for many species. There are 23,371 annotated protein coding genes in Giant Panel. 10% would mean about 2,300 orphan genes in the panel. But I have also contacted Paul Nelson who has done important work on the orphan genes and he was quoting Lee et al. 2022 who write the novel annotation identified 22,009, 924 high confidence protein coding genes of which 92.3% were functionally annotated genes. And now, Nelson continued, the lack of annotation is often not always, but often a good clue to orphan status. This would mean that approximately 1765 protein coding genes in the pandas are taxon specific.
So nevertheless, he stressed that at present the question is open well, orphan genes.
[00:29:59] Speaker A: Are certainly a provocative part of the argument against Darwinian evolution. So it's interesting to see how they play into the panda specifically. Now then, there's a curious case of the duox2 gene, a single gene mutation in pandas that affects their thyroid hormones. This might sound like a flaw, but it could actually be a key part of how pandas conserve energy on their low calorie bamboo diet. Can you give us more detail about that particular gene mutation?
[00:30:33] Speaker B: Yes, I like to do so.
Rudolph, one of the authors or the lead author of this paper Corresponding paper A report in the giant panda genome, dual oxidase 2, a gene critical for thyroid hormone synthesis, contains a giant panda unique single nucleotide mutation that results in a premature stop and possibly a non functional protein.
However, it is not yet known whether this premature step codon results in no translation of the gene or whether it is a truncated version of the protein that is produced that it may have biological functions. The important point here is that in many cases of so called junk DNA important functions were finally discovered. The Casey Laskins literature survey of 2024 on the topic of so called junk DNA he quotes there he and his co authors quote more than 800 papers showing functional cases which we at first surmised to be just junk DNA. Important point is that there were experiments with mice and they did the same with mice. They had to put a premature stop code on in that dual oxidase 2 gene and the mice now showed many of the features of the pandnas. Interestingly however, I would say applying the optimal punna principle here, Hyacrum thyroxin in pandas most certainly and undeniably could not transform the panda into a new bear species like the Asian black bear, the brown bear or the sun bear.
Considering the entire panda system including genes involved in their physiological and morphological traits known and probably many still unknown unidentified ones. At present the radial seismic is sin organized into the panda's entire anatomy and behavior for grasping, walking and climbing, apart from the panda's unique gut microbiome.
Recall please, that alter the panda's significance for major ecological tasks which have mentioned a few minutes ago.
And this is exactly as a farsighted ingenious genetic engineer would have considered and implemented it on all biological so this will not be fully explained by the panda unique single nucleotide mutation in a duox 2 gene which is absent in the other carnivores, mice and humans.
[00:33:51] Speaker A: Yeah, well, what about the fossil record? What can it tell us about pandas and their ancient relatives?
[00:33:58] Speaker B: Well, 2022 have this to say about Aylouarctos. This is a fossil displaying a sum almost identical to that of the panda Aeoluropoda ayleuarctos. This fossil is from the late Miocene of China, some 8 million years ago. According to the geological timetable, considering a generation time for The Panda of 4.5 to 6.5 years would mean a constancy of the panda population of more than 1 million generation of Panda bears since the late Miocene. The thumb has not enlarged further because it must be balanced with the constraints of weight bearing while walking in a plantigrade posture. This morphological adaptation in panda evolution thus reflects a dual function of the radial seismoid for both bamboo manipulation and weight distribution in general. This the enormous constancy of such living fossils was also something quite unsuspected from an evolutionary point of view. Or as well known, Niall Eldridge once put it, living fossils are something of an embarrassment to the expectation that evolutionary change is inevitable as time goes by and that. And what is more, living fossils are not the exception as they are usually portrayed in the biological and otherware literature, but the rule for a large part of animal and plant families. We are literally surrounded by living fossils. Angiosperms, mammoths, birds, many other organisms. I have written about that topic on Darwin's Abominable Mystery.
[00:36:01] Speaker A: Yeah, okay, so anything but plausible.
[00:36:04] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:36:05] Speaker A: So neo Darwinian mechanisms seem to be insufficient to explain the presence of this well suited if unusual adaptation in pandas. The intelligent design perspective is the view that biological systems are purposefully designed rather than the result of accumulated imperfections. So why is id? Why is intelligent design a better explanation for the panda's thumb?
[00:36:30] Speaker B: As already pointed out now several times to the best of my knowledge, none of the evolutionists who critic who criticize the panda's thumb as being crude, clumsy, highly inefficient, imperfect, suboptimal and bad design have ever suggested a better construction for that thumb. Probably because the better in quotation marks totally different thumb for grasping mutinda the panda's ability to walk properly. This is always a dual function which must be emphasized.
On the other hand, we may ask, why not intelligent design?
William Dembsky and Michael B. Have repeatedly emphasized that in our daily method to detect intelligent design there is no magic, no vitalism, no appeal to occult forces involved. And indeed inferring design is widespread, rational and objectifiable.
Debsky hardly a dubious innovation.
Intelligent design formalizes and makes precise something we do all the time.
All of us are all the time engaged in a form of rational activity which without being tendentious, can be described as inferring design.
Inferring design as a perfectly common and well accepted human activity.
People find it important to identify events that are caused through the purposeful premeditated action of an intelligent agent and to distinguish such events from events due to either law or chance.
Intelligent design unpacks the logic of this everyday activity and applies it to the questions of science.
To repeat and emphasize, I think so important, there is no magic, no vitalism, nor appeal to occult forces. Here it is widespread intelligent design, rational and objectifiable. How is it objectifiable? Now to the scientific tools to detect ID in organisms belong irreducible complexity and specified be defined by irreducible complex. I mean a single system composed of several well matched interacting parts that contribute to the basic functions, whereas the removal of any one of the parts causes a system to effectively cease functioning. So you can look at these complex systems in biology and ask the question is there irreducible complexity involved or not. And the other point is, even if irreducible complexity is not involved, a specified complexity may be involved. Specified complexity, the property of an object being both unlikely and complexly structured or structurally organized, as well as to conform to an independent specification. Objects exhibiting specified complexity must be both complex, unlikely under the relevant probability distribution and specified, for example, conform to an independent or detached specification.
[00:40:21] Speaker A: Yeah, well, that's really interesting and I like some of the quotes that you include as you make an argument for intelligent design behind the design of the panda's thumb. Well, this is certainly a fascinating topic and I really appreciate you taking the time, Dr. Loenig, to share your insights into this intriguing debate. I want to thank you for unpacking some of the insights that you've prepared in this paper.
[00:40:51] Speaker B: Thank you very much for inviting and having formulated so many well formulated questions which could be answered by biological facts. It shows, to sum up, this is a really not just an isolated structure, it must be seen in a complex web of biological of the biological system. And so I would call it the optimal Panda principle.
[00:41:38] Speaker A: Yeah, well, in the show notes for this episode, always
[email protected] we'll include links to Dr. Lunig's paper on the panda's thumb so you can read it and look at it yourself, as well as a link to his website where you'll find detailed listings of his research and publications. In addition to the panda, he's also written about other animals, including the koala bear, birds, lions, hippos and giraffes. And of course, he's written about many examples of intelligent design in the plant world too, from plant galls to the flowering plants, explosion in the fossil record and the difficulties it presents for Darwin's theory. It's all at Dr. Lunig's website, which which we'll link to in the show notes for today's episode. Well, for ID the Future, I'm Andrew McDermott. Thanks for listening.
Visit us at idthefuture.com and intelligentdesign.org this.
[00:42:31] Speaker B: Program is copyright Discovery Institute and recorded.
[00:42:34] Speaker A: By its center for Science and Culture.
