[00:00:04] Speaker A: Id the Future, a podcast about evolution and intelligent design.
[00:00:12] Speaker B: Welcome to ID the future. I'm your host, Andrew McDermott. Today, I'm welcoming Dr. Casey Luskin to the show to discuss two recent articles in the journal Nature and their implications for the scientific debate and intelligent design. Dr. Luskin is a scientist and attorney with graduate degrees in science and law, giving him expertise in both the scientific and legal dimensions of the debate over evolution. He holds a PhD in geology from the University of Johannesburg, where he specialized in paleo magnetism and the early plate tectonic history of South Africa. Casey serves as associate director of the center for Science and Culture at the Discovery Institute. Casey, welcome.
[00:00:54] Speaker A: Great to be with you, Andrew. Thanks so much for having me.
[00:00:57] Speaker B: Absolutely. So, Casey, you noticed two articles in the prestigious science journal Nature recently, both of which are encouraging from an ID perspective. Let's start with a comment written by biochemist Nick Lane and bioengineer Joanna Xavier titled to unravel the origin of Life, treat findings as pieces of a bigger puzzle. Now, David Coppage covered this for evolutionnews.org, our flagship news and commentary website. He called it a devastating critique of origin of life research. Do you agree with his assessment?
[00:01:30] Speaker A: Well, David Coppage wrote a great article about this paper in nature. I don't know if I'd call it a devastating critique of origin of life research, but I would call it a very strong exhortation to the field of origin of life research. And they're certainly very critical of certain leading models of the origin of life, like the primordial soup hypothesis or the RNA world hypothesis, which kind of work together. But Nick Lane and Joanne Xavier, they're both origin of life researchers. And so, you know, they're not in this paper, in their little review. They're not about to abandon a materialistic model for the origin of life. What they're doing is they're exhorting their field to sort of use higher standards of scientific discourse, I would say. And they know that their field is engaging in a hype, and they use that word, hype, and overselling ideas towards publication. They also say this, and they say that they sometimes see researchers in the field making brash claims in order to get funding and get their papers published. And so their main message, I think, is that their field of origin of life research needs to squarely face the tough questions and not cherry pick little bits of sort of successful data. In order to get papers published, they say, the field needs to start making, quote, real progress. And to do this, researchers must, quote, stop cherry picking the most beautiful bits of data, or the most apparently convincing isolated steps, and explore the implications of these deep differences in context, unquote. So what they're really saying, Andrew, is that a lot of researchers in the origin of life field, they will find some little experiment that did something interesting, that's helping to solve one small piece of one very big problem. And then we will, in the public, will then see news stories saying, oh, origin of life close to being solved or missing link in the origin of life research discovered. And I think that Xavier and Lane, in their nature article, would call this hype, or would call this overselling, or would call this making brash claims in order to get papers published in order to attract attention, know, some cool experiment that was done. But really, they would say that in doing so, that the field is not really wrestling with some of the tough questions and major obstacles that many of these origin of life models are facing. And what they're saying is that if the field wants to make real progress towards solving the origin of life, they've got to stop hyping things and focus on the successes. They've got to start looking at the hard questions and the obstacles that these models are facing and really basically get real about the problems. So, I really admire this paper by Lane and Xavier. I think it's a great example of scientists that are calling their fellow researchers to a higher standard of scientific work and calling their field to really being more candid and, I think, open and sort of real about how serious the problems are that their field is facing. And until they do that, they're saying we're not going to make real progress towards solving the origin of life.
[00:04:25] Speaker B: Yeah, it's really nice when we can see that honesty from scientists. And as you mentioned, it's one thing for it to come from the ID community, but it's quite another to be written honestly in a journal like Nature. So that's pretty encouraging. So what do we know about the writers of this piece? Nick Lane and Joanna Xavier.
[00:04:47] Speaker A: So, Nick Lane is a british biochemist and a professor of evolutionary biochemistry at University College London. He's also the author of multiple books on the origin of life. I've read quite a few of his materials over the years. Joanna Xavier is a scientist with. I believe she has an engineering background, but she's in the department of chemistry at Imperial College London. They're both well respected scientists in the field, and I don't think either of them would certainly endorse intelligent design. They're both, again, committed to materialistic explanations for the origin of life. And as you said, Andrew, that's what makes this article so interesting. And in this article, not only are they calling their field to sort of a higher standard of scientific discourse, they also are acknowledging, quite candidly, that, quote, there is no consensus, unquote, about how the origin of life took place. And they know that their field is sort of full of these competing hypotheses that are hard to prove or disprove unambiguously. They say the field is splintered. They say the field is beset with overclaims and counterclaims, which in turn warp funding, attention and recognition. And so really, there's just this full acknowledgment in this paper that the origin of life field, frankly, I would say they don't use this exact word, but I would say that it's not a very healthy place. They say there needs to be more, quote, objectivity, cooperation, and falsifiability, good science, unquote, in their field. And the implication, or sort of the subtext, is that there isn't enough objectivity, cooperation, falsifiability, or good science in the field of origin of life research. So this is a hard word that they're giving to their fellow researchers in their field, but I respect it very much.
And they certainly have their own views on the origin of life, which they espouse and promote in this article. But I think that the call that they're making to their fellow researchers is very important and very admirable.
[00:06:33] Speaker B: Yeah. Interesting that this comment was published in Nature, given the journal's original goal when it was founded in the 19th century. What can you tell us about that?
[00:06:41] Speaker A: Yeah, so that's a really great question, Andrew, and I was really appreciative, the fact that you were going to ask this during our conversation today. So, as you mentioned earlier, nature is arguably the top scientific journal in the world, but the respected historian of evolution, historian of science and evolution, Peter J. Baller, he wrote that nature was originally founded in the late 19th century by Thomas H. Huxley, Darwin's bulldog, the famous early evolutionist, who was a very early strong promoter of evolution and agnosticism and sort of early free thinker type. And he noted that it was created expressly for the purpose of promoting a, quote, campaign, unquote, to support Darwinism. Here's what Bowler writes. He says, quote, huxley and his friends ensured that Darwinism had come to stay. They controlled the scientific journals. The journal Nature was founded in part to promote the campaign and manipulated academic appointments. So essentially, what he's saying is that nature was founded as part of a campaign to promote, quote, unquote, Darwinism. So nature has always had a very sort of pro evolutionary agenda. And so I think the fact that they would publish this article that's so sharply critical of the field of origin of life research, I think, is quite striking and means something very important.
[00:07:58] Speaker B: Yeah, absolutely. Well, basically, nature was founded then, as part of a campaign to promote Darwinism. That's really interesting and something to keep in mind. Now, what are some of the confessions that Lane and Xavier make in their critique?
[00:08:13] Speaker A: Yeah, so, as far as the science goes, I mean, we can get into more about their criticisms of the field of origin of life research, but as far as the science goes, as I mentioned, they admit that there is, quote, no consensus, unquote, about how the origin of life took place. And in fact, they admit that there is no agreement on many fundamental questions, like whether life must be carbon based, whether life arose on earth or came from outer space, whether if it did arise on earth and whether it started in hydrothermal vents or some kind of primordial soup, whether we can even definitively point to fossil evidence of early life, that's a very challenging question. You'd think it would be easy. One of my good friends, during my PhD research, he actually looks at fossil evidence of early life. In fact, I've got three and a half billion year old church from South Africa in my living room that very likely contains microfossils of early bacteria on life on earth. But it's very difficult to definitively show in a scientific paper that what you're looking at under the microscope is actually a fossil of a microorganism from three and a half or so billion years ago. Very, very difficult to make that case unambiguously. They also say there's no consensus about what the genetic makeup of the first life looked like. So all these unanswered questions really leave the field of those studying the origin of life in a difficult position. And this is why they say that the field is, quote, unquote, splintered. And again, they say the field is, quote, beset with overclaims and counterclaims, which in turn, warp funding and tension ad and recognition. So I think they're really saying that there is a major lack of consensus in the field of origin of life research on very fundamental questions. Now, they try to sort of paint a bit of a rosy veneer on the situation as much as they can, saying that, quote, none of this precludes understanding the origin of life, but it does make competing hypotheses hard to prove or disprove unambiguously. So they're still hopeful that the answer will come and that progress will be made. But I think it's really a statement that the field of origin of life research is not in a very healthy place right now. And they even say there's a, quote, relentless pressure to publish to secure funding, tenure or promotion. There's all kinds of pressure on these researchers, or that brash claims for a breakthrough on the origin of life or unhelpful noise, they say. And so, really, these are strong criticisms they're making of their field.
[00:10:32] Speaker B: Yeah, well, Lane and Xavier also identify major problems with the most popular approaches to the origin of life problem. Which models do they critique?
[00:10:42] Speaker A: Yeah, so they first critique the prebiotic soup model and its companion model, the RNA world hypothesis. So, basically, the idea is that the primordial soup somehow helps you get a giant pool of random RNA sequences, and then some of these random RNAs somehow, just by chance, acquire the ability to self replicate. And once you get self replication, that's when, as theory goes, darwinian evolution takes over and gives you all the complexity of the world, from bacteria to bumblebees to Beethoven to Bieber, with no offense to Justin Bieber.
Basically, the idea is that you get darwinian evolution going from there, but it starts off in this primordial soup producing RNAs, which then somehow gives you this self replicating RNA. So let's talk about their critique of the primordial soup. Well, they note that the most popular models of prebiotic chemistry today start with large amounts of cyanide, which must somehow have been present on the early earth. But they know that there is little agreement about how exactly this vast reservoir of cyanide came to be or how it could persist over time. They also note that if you want to form RNA, somehow you have to link up nucleotides in a water based environment through a process called polymerization. But this kind of polymerization reaction is chemically disfavored in a water based environment like the primordial soup. So they note that proponents of this model, quote, imagine a series, a succession of wet and dry cycles in which the pond dries out to form polymers of RNA, then fills again with water containing nucleotides, and so on, cycle after cycle, making more and more RNA. The problem is that these dry cycles require heat, which is deadly to these nascent RNA molecules. But then they launch into some more serious criticisms of the RNA world hypothesis. So, according to the RNA world hypothesis, RNA might have been a simpler form of the first life because RNA can both carry genetic information and also catalyze certain chemical reactions. So maybe if RNA formed the first life, then the idea is that it could both be an information carrying molecule and drive certain reactions forward. But they note that, quote, there is little evidence that RNA can catalyze many of the reactions attributed to it, such as those required for metabolism, unquote. And they go on to say that, quote, modern day metabolic reactions bear no resemblance to the cyanide chemistry that makes nucleotides in this model. Evolution would therefore need to replace each and every step in metabolism, and there is no evidence that such a wholesale replacement is possible. And what they say about evolving metabolism in sort of this early RNA world type environment is just devastating, they say, unlike evolving an eye, a process in which intermediates have function. As an aside, I might question that, but we can talk about that later. But they go on to say, quote, encoding only half the steps of a metabolic pathway, or half the pathways needed for a free living cell has little, if any, benefit. Can genes that encode multiple metabolic pathways have risen at once? The ODS against this are so great that the astrophysicist Fred Hoyle once compared it to a tornado blowing through a junkyard and assembling a jumbo jet. It is not good enough to counter that. Evolution would find a way. A real explanation needs to somehow specify how. So this is very, very interesting. They're basically saying that to evolve metabolism in this origin of life scenario is very difficult because you need multiple steps be present in order to generate the energy molecules and process the sort of the surrounding materials to generate energy. You can't just do this one little step at a time. The whole system has to be there in order to function. They go on to note that an RNA world environment is, quote, going to, quote, favor the RNA strands that replicate the fastest, okay. But then they go on to say that this means that far from building complexity, these tend to get smaller and smaller over time. So when you're in this RNA world environment and you have this large pool of RNAs that are competing to replicate, you're not going to build a complex cell. What you're going to favor are very short, simple RNAs that are very efficient at replicating, and it's not going to probably drive you towards something that looks like life. They close out this section by saying, quote, on balance, we would say that prebiotic chemistry, starting with cyanide, can produce the building blocks of life. But most of the downstream steps predicted by this framework remain problematic, unquote. So, in other words, maybe you can get some interesting results from certain aspects of what you need for the origin of life, but that doesn't mean you have a viable model. And this is one of the main points of their paper, is that you can't just cherry pick the successes of your origin of life model. You need to really grapple with the hard questions. So they do have their own preferred model for the origin of life. They prefer the hydrothermal vent scenario, and they like this model because there's a lot of energy and flux of materials, including carbon, through these vent networks. And they think that this could drive some kind of a primitive metabolic network on the early earth. And what's cool, though, is that they're not afraid to admit that there are problems with their model. They admit that there are, quote, plenty of problems here, too, but they differ from those in the prebiotic soup framework, unquote. So I respect that. One problem they identify in the hydrothermal vent model is that a lot of the material in the water and around the vents is hydrogen, h two and carbon dioxide. But they note that these are, quote, not particularly reactive, unquote. And many chemists cite the need for enzymes to serve as catalysts to drive the needed reactions forward. You can't just do it with hydrogen and carbon dioxide. They note that metabolism without enzymes was dismissed by the renowned chemist Lester Lee Orgel as, quote, an appeal to magic, unquote. And they say that, quote, further data are required, supporting or otherwise, unquote, to explain how you sort of got this early metabolism network going in the hydrothermal vent type environment. But much like the RNA world hypothesis, I would say that polymerization of nucleotides and monomers into large polymers like RNA is also a problem for the hydrothermal vent model because it takes place underwater. And polymerization linking up monomers into polymers does not want to take place in a water based environment. It's not a chemically favored reaction. They note in their paper that polymerization can possibly occur on mineral surfaces in water. But again, you get these little pockets of RNA molecules that act like evolutionary dead ends, and it's not clear that you can get RNA under these conditions. They gently admit this, saying, quote, if serious attempts to synthesize RNA under these conditions fail, the overall framework would need to be modified, unquote. So again, the primordial or the hydrothermal vent hypothesis also has problems. They note, however, that other models have their own problems, that the life from space model also needs to answer questions like how and where did organic molecules form, come together and polymerize, et cetera? We don't have answers there. We sort of just are pushing the question back there. They also talk about models like, though, the coacervate model, and they say, quote, if life started out as droplets known as coacervates, in which emissible liquids separate into distinct phases that promote different types of chemistry, then one must ask where all the precursors to feed their growth came from, unquote. So we can go on and on. But they're basically, it's kind of know when you watch an episode of South park, which I guess I'm not too ashamed to admit that I do watch South park sometimes, and they kind of know, make fun of everybody. Well, this article basically attacks everybody attacks every model in the origin of life, even their own preferred model. And I think what they're trying to do is they're trying to sort of be examples of how they think origin of life researchers should conduct themselves in discourse, not just going out there and cherry picking the data that was a success and then hyping it as if that we've solved the origin of life, but really asking hard questions. Okay, fine, so you solved this problem. What about these ten really hard problems? How are we going to solve those? Because if you don't look at the hard problems, you're never going to solve them. So I admire what they've done. They're trying to model for their field, how to discuss the origin of life, and I really appreciate what they've done here.
[00:18:54] Speaker B: And it's interesting to compare or contrast their humility with the constant hype that's coming through the news. I mean, just as we were prepping for this episode in the last couple of days, I saw a headline come through. It said scientists just got closer to creating artificial life in the lab, and they talk about researchers being able to create an RNA molecule that made copies of other types of RNA.
And so it's just these wild claims that keep coming through. But it's refreshing to see this honesty.
[00:19:25] Speaker A: Yeah, exactly. And this is why Jim tour, I think, gets so frustrated sometimes with the field of origin of life. He sees this hype, and he cites surveys where the general public, very large percentages of the general public, believe that we have made life in the lab, or even that we've, like, made a frog in the lab. Okay, well, why does the public have these gross misconceptions? Is it the public's fault? No, it's because origin of life researchers are constantly hyping their ideas putting out these stories saying, oh, we've just solved this huge problem, and the answer to the origin of life and creating life in the lab is just around the corner, or this will help us do it, even. And so, no wonder the public is so confused when this kind of hype is just out there in the media constantly.
[00:20:10] Speaker B: Yeah, totally. Well, speaking of Dr. Turer, he's called the origin of life field clueless. Is this critique in nature much different than his critique?
[00:20:19] Speaker A: So I don't think that they would say that their field is clueless. I think what they would say is that their field is too Pollyanna ish and that it's emphasizing the successes too much, but not really coming to terms with the problems faced by the various models. And so their main message, again, is that just a little bit of a success in one experiment does not mean you've obtained a viable model. And here's a key quote. I think that they want origin of life research to appreciate. They say, quote, and they're talking about Stanley Miller. Quote. The fact that it is possible to make amino acids by passing electrical discharges through a jovian mixture of gases, as the US chemist Stanley Miller famously did 70 years ago, does not mean that that is how life began, merely that this chemistry is possible. Likewise, the fact that analogous chemistry can occur in hydrothermal systems, or from cyanide and terrestrial geothermal systems or in interstellar space does not mean that all of these environments were all required for life to start, just that this chemistry is favored under many conditions, unquote. So what are they saying here? They're taking some of the greatest success of the origin of life field. Staley Miller's research, which produced many amino acids under conditions that at that time, back in that time, were thought to have mimicked the conditions on the early earth. And what they're saying is, just because you've had some success doesn't mean that this is how it actually happened, because overall, the paradigm has to work. And so, again, ultimately, their goal is to take aim at the hype and the origin of life research and say that we've got to stop hyping things. We've got to be more realistic about acknowledging the problems with their models. They say, quote, brash claims for a breakthrough on the origin of life are unhelpful noise if they do not come in the context of a wider framework. The problem is ultimately answerable only if the whole question is taken seriously, unquote. So, again, I really appreciate what they're doing. We need to appreciate that what they're saying here is that the origin of life field makes brash claims about small successes that are unrealistic because the overall project is far from solved. In fact, one of their recommendations is that the field needs to accept the possibility of falsification of its own ideas. They say the field needs to, quote, embrace open science. Accepting that specific hypotheses will be disproved and that frameworks will be reshaped requires the publication of negative results too often undervalued and underpublished, unquote. So again, to appreciate what they're saying here, they're saying that their field is not very open to the possibility that certain models are wrong. And they say that the field needs, quote, constructive disunity, which will, quote, promote objectivity, cooperation and falsification, good science. And again, the subtext is that objectivity, cooperation and falsifiability are lacking in the field, essentially the opposite of what they call good science.
[00:23:04] Speaker B: Very interesting that they would encourage the publication of negative results as well as the positive results that look favorable. Well, some contend that ID is a science stopper, but adopting a design framework for studying life can actually light the match for scientific research. Tell us how. In a nutshell, yeah, absolutely.
[00:23:23] Speaker A: So I would argue, and I think most ID theorists would say we need a paradigm that recognizes the fundamentality of information for the operation of life, and therefore also for the origin of life. And so that means that if we're going to explain the origin of life, we need a paradigm that recognizes the fact that information in our experience, especially specified information, comes from only one known source, and that is the mind. Once we do this, all these origin of life experiments, they start to make sense. Andrew, you're producing prebiotic know, producing nucleotide bases through some kind of a one pot experiment with building blocks that look like cyanide. Okay, that's great, but you've designed the experiment and that required information to design this experiment and set it up to be able to work. Every single experimental success in origin of life research worked because the researchers used their skills as chemists to build information into the experimental setup. So really anything that works in the origin of life is because of information. And information comes from mind. So if you're going to explain the origin of life, I think all signs point back to the need for a mind. And until the field comes to terms with that fact, I don't think they're going to make real progress. So I think that ID really can help us make progress towards understanding the origin of life, especially when you can appreciate that all the research being done in this field required information from a mind in order for it to work.
[00:24:51] Speaker B: Yeah, very important points. Well, you covered another recent article in Nature, a book review by Oxford emeritus biologist Dennis Noble, calling for a major rethink of biology. In a piece titled it's Time to admit that genes are not the blueprint for life. Noble is reviewing a new book called how Life works by Philip Ball. Why did Noble's piece catch your attention?
[00:25:13] Speaker A: Well, as I just. You know, we at discovery and the ID community are very interested in questions about information in biology. Now, the classical view of the genome is that genes, which, of course, contain information, are made of protein coding DNA. And this is all that matters for building an organism. And there's a lot of information in the protein coding genes that is vital to an organism, and that information, of course, demands explanation. But we think that intelligent agency is the best explanation for information. And so it turns out that there's information biology outside of just the protein coding genes. There's information in what was once called junk DNA, the non protein coding segments of DNA. And many of these junk DNA segments form RNA genes or regulatory sequences that are vital for the workings of cells and organisms. And then there's information outside of the DNA entirely, such as the sugar code, or information on cell membranes or electrical codes that guides development, or epigenetic information in the form of molecular tags that sit on top of our DNA to turn genes on and off. All of these cutting edge discoveries in biology are anticipated by a design based paradigm which predicts that we should find more and more information and regulation and control as we dig deeper and deeper into biology. So I think that what Dennis Noble is saying is that genes not being the blueprint of life implies that there is a lot more information in biology than we often appreciate, and we would agree with that 100%. Now, Dennis Noble is not an ID proponent. He's very much an evolutionary theorist who is committed to materialistic versions of evolution. However, the fact that he's recognizing all this information outside of the protein coding genes in biology is very significant and a point that we and the ID movement would say is also very important and needs to be fully recognized and appreciated. What that means for biology, right.
[00:27:14] Speaker B: Well, part of the argument for ID is the complexity and design of the machine like structures that exist within living organisms. And, of course, we don't advocate that living organisms literally are machines, but we're pointing to levels of engineering prowess that require a more adequate explanation than a step wise, unguided natural process. What view is noble taking about the complexity of living things and why.
[00:27:38] Speaker A: Yeah. So, Andrew, of course, nobody, I think, would reasonably deny that there are machine like structures in biology. We're not saying that living organisms literally are machines, but, I mean, going back to 500 years ago, early scientists would look at the heart and say, this is a pump. This is a machine that has resemblances to human design, machines, and technology.
But noble quotes Philip Ball saying that we should abandon machine or computer like metaphors for biological systems. But the reason why he's saying this, I think, is what really matters. He's not saying that there's no similarity between biological systems and machines. What he's saying is that life is, quote, far more interesting and wonderful, unquote, than machines or computers. So really, it's not that life is not as complex as machines. It's that its complexity is so much greater than human technology or machines that kind of outstrips the metaphor. So I don't think that noble is saying that the comparison between life and computers or machines is entirely inappropriate or completely irrelevant to anything we find in biology. I don't think anybody would say that. I take him to be saying that life is far more interesting and wonderful than the idea that life is merely a computer or a machine. And if that's what he's saying, then I would completely agree.
[00:28:52] Speaker B: Yeah, totally. Well, another area where noble argues that biological systems are more complex than often appreciated is something called intrinsically disordered proteins, or IDPs. Tell us about those.
[00:29:05] Speaker A: Yes, so IDPs are really interesting. They're kind of an underappreciated type of protein. Again, they're called intrinsically disordered proteins. They're proteins that don't have a stable, three dimensional shape. And noble notes that these do not imply that these proteins are, quote, sloppy design, unquote, as he puts it, but rather that, quote, he says, being disordered makes proteins versatile communicators, able to respond rapidly to changes in the cell, binding to different partners, and transmitting different signals depending upon the circumstance, unquote. So, in other words, IDPs can switch from one shape to another very rapidly in response to cues that the cell might be sending out in response to environmental signals that they encounter. And this allows one protein to then perform multiple vital functions in the cell. So again, the complexity of life appears to be greater than we expected. We think of proteins just having one single shape doing one single job. But no, these intrinsically disordered proteins are able to sort of switch like transformers from one shape to another, which allows them to do multiple different jobs in the HMM.
[00:30:12] Speaker B: And you've written on IDPs with Brian Miller last year. Does Noble's essay confirm your view of.
[00:30:18] Speaker A: IDPs in the sense that IDPs are not sort of these simple molecules whose sequences or shapes don't matter? Yes, a noble's essay definitely confirms our view of IDPs last year, Brian Miller and I, writing also with Steve dilly and Emily Reeves, we wrote a paper that responded to some ID critics. And we noted that some ID critics have cited IDPs to claim that some proteins don't need to fold into a specific shape to do their jobs. And then the argument says that, okay, therefore, their amino acid sequences really don't matter very much. And that would make these kinds of proteins potentially very easy to evolve. And we had multiple responses to this kind of an argument. First, I think we said that, well, IDPs only constitute a portion, probably, arguably a minority of proteins. So these arguments certainly don't apply to all proteins, especially the numerous enzymes in our cells, which do have to have very precise shapes and do have very precise jobs in the cell. But more to the point, it is not the case that the sequences and shapes of intrinsically disordered proteins don't matter. And this is essentially what noble says. It's not that their sequences and shapes don't matter. It's that their shapes are dynamic and can switch from one form to another. And we wrote about this last year, noting that these are not, quote, unfolded proteins, but they are conditionally folded proteins, which can change their shape almost like miniaturized transformers, in response to cellular cues that tell them what to do in different situations. So we might even view these IDPs as more complex than your typical proteins that only have one single stable shape, because these proteins can take on multiple stable shapes. And I would predict that if we were to study these in detail, their amino acid sequence is going to matter greatly to allow them to do their multiple different jobs in the field.
[00:32:08] Speaker B: So what are the implications of all this for evolution? Is noble open to other mechanisms of organismal change?
[00:32:15] Speaker A: So noble is an evolutionist. He's not an ID proponent, and he certainly is committed to materialistic versions of evolution, but he thinks that evolution can proceed very rapidly. He's kind of a fan of the Stephen J. Gould Niles Eldridge punctuated equilibrium model of evolution, and he wants to ask, how can we get very rapid evolution? And he thinks that sort of by reshuffling gene modules, duplicating genes, and then subsequent fine tuning or tinkering, we can actually get new genes very rapidly. And that genes are sort of designed to evolve in a very modular manner. Now, I would say that this model of gene evolution is actually not all that different from what a lot of other folks in the field would say, and we've critiqued it greatly. Read Darwin's doubt by Stephen Meyer. He has a great chapter. It's chapter eleven, I believe, where he critiques many of these models of gene evolution. And it's true that you can fine tune a protein that already works, but finding a functional protein fold in amino acid sequence space is very, very difficult to do. So I think that although noble is open to sort of rapid models of organismal change, I think that ultimately, I'm skeptical that this can happen in a blind manner. He also is a big fan of sort of what you might call natural genetic engineering type views of folks like James Shapiro and other third way evolutionary folks, where you have organisms being able to sort of respond to environmental cues, rapidly induce mutations into their genomes, and hope that something useful comes out of that. So he would argue that organisms can kind of harness random mutation or stochasticity by sort of upping the mutation rate when needed in response to stress from the environment. And that'll hopefully give you something new and useful from a random evolutionary process. And again, this might work in some cases. These actually might be mechanisms by which organisms that are designed to evolve, but I don't know how much they can actually do. And they may actually be operating within pre programmed limits. So they're interesting ideas, but I don't know if they can actually produce many complex systems that we see in biology.
[00:34:23] Speaker B: Okay, now, Noble thinks there's a place for agency and purpose in biology. What's he saying there? What does he mean by those words?
[00:34:32] Speaker A: So when noble talks about the need to recognize, quote, agency and purpose in biology, he's not talking about intelligent design of life by an external agent. Here's how he defines agency. Quote, the ability of an organism to bring about change to itself or its environment to achieve a goal. And so that essentially is how he defines agency. And the agents here are organisms. But in saying this, he's acknowledging that there is much in biology that is purposeful. And he notes that multiple experts now argue that, quote, agency and purpose are definitive characteristics of life that have been overlooked in conventional gene centric views of biology, unquote. And again, this is not the modern theory of intelligent design. But once we begin to allow agency and purpose in biology and allow it to enter our understanding of how life works, we're taking important steps towards being able to recognize teleology in biology. I think what noble would argue for is teleonomy, essentially that organisms can be agents that act with purpose. And again, going back to natural genetic engineering, he would say that organisms can influence their own genomes. We'll get to that later. But he would say that this is purpose and a form of sort of teleonomy, where organisms can shape the world, not necessarily designed by an external agent, but designed by organisms.
[00:35:54] Speaker B: Okay, now, if noble is arguing that genes aren't controlling the blueprint of life, what does he suggest might be in the driver's seat?
[00:36:02] Speaker A: Well, he first notes that back in the early 2000s, when the Human Genome project was first completed, everybody thought that the human genome project would reveal the blueprint of life. But it didn't do that, because biology is far more complicated than the idea of one gene, one trait. And he notes that for some traits, hundreds of genes might be needed to determine that trait's blueprint. So it's not like you have an eye gene or a hair gene. Numerous, numerous genes and numerous aspects of the genome might be needed to interact to produce many of your body structures. What he's saying is that organisms can control their genome. And again, this gets back to natural genetic engineering type concepts, where an organism might induce higher mutation rate in response to environmental cues, or we control our genomes, we use somatic hypermutations to generate antibodies. This is part of a predesigned mechanism that our bodies are pre programmed to use stochastic mutations in certain aspects of our genome, to be able to generate antibodies that have all different shapes and sizes, and that allows us to respond very rapidly to foreign bodies that invade our bodies and allows us to then target them and attack them. So organisms can use various strategies to basically modify their own genomes. Transposable elements are another good example that he would cite. We see that transposable elements are sort of designed to hop around the genomes, and they're designed to sort of fine tune certain structures. There was a paper recently that found that these repetitive DNA sequences, like we find with transposable elements, can function as Rio stats, essentially fine tuning the control of certain biological functions. And so these, again, are from an id perspective. We would argue that these are examples of how organisms are designed to evolve within predetermined limits. You're not going to build complex systems, but these are examples of how organisms are designed to be able to evolve and respond rapidly to their environments. But noble sees these as showing that organisms control their genomes, rather than genomes controlling the organisms. And it's sort of a major step away from the common reductionist view of life of Richard Dawkins, that genes basically are, we're just the products of our selfish genes, he would say, well, actually, we can. Organisms can control our genes. And I think this is very interesting. It's a radical new view of biology that I think is going to take shape and take hold more and more as the 21st century goes on.
[00:38:41] Speaker B: Yeah, definitely a step in the right direction. Well, Noble concludes his review in nature by saying, quote, it's time to stop pretending that, give or take a few bits and pieces, we know how life works. Sitting in uncertainty while working to make those discoveries will be biology's great task for the 21st century, unquote. Would you agree with Noble's vision for the future?
[00:39:03] Speaker A: Yes, I definitely would. And I think we're finding that information in biology is far more important than we initially thought. There are far more sources of information than we originally thought, and biology is far more complex than we initially suspected. And reductionist views that say that we're controlled by our DNA just don't hold merit anymore. So Dawkins, brilliant guy that he is, his view is just not holding sway anymore, that we are simply products of our selfish genes. Organisms can control their genomes. Genomes have far more sources of information than just our selfish protein coding genes. And protein coding genes themselves are not enough to contain the blueprint of the organism. So I think that this is where 21st century biology is going. I think that idea is a paradigm which basically deals in the currency of understanding the origin of information. I think that ID is well poised to help guide biology into this new 21st century view of how organisms work. And I'm really excited to see where it goes. I hope I'm around long enough to see it. Andrew?
[00:40:04] Speaker B: Yeah, exciting times, indeed. Well, Casey, where can listeners go to learn more about these developments?
[00:40:10] Speaker A: Well, we posted some great articles about
[email protected]. So I highly recommend that website listen to ID the future as well. We're hopefully providing good resources here. Also, check out those websites.
[00:40:23] Speaker B: Yeah, and actually, I wanted to mention that Joanna Xavier, who we've been talking about in this episode, actually read Dr. Stephen Meyer's book signature in the cell, and she said, I found it one of the best books I've read in terms of really putting the finger on the questions. Now, obviously, she didn't agree with his final assessment, but it's showing you that these researchers and scientists are reading the work that we're putting out, and they're joining us in asking these questions. So signature in the cell audience is a very good book to cover a lot of these issues that we've been talking about. Well, Casey, thank you so much for your time and for unpacking these nature articles with us today.
[00:41:04] Speaker A: It's been fun, Andrew, great conversation, and it's great to see such exciting articles coming out in top journals like nature.
[00:41:11] Speaker B: Yeah, absolutely. Well, until next time, you can learn more about Casey's
[email protected]. That's his website, caseyluskin.com. And that's it. You can go to idthefuture if you want more of these episodes or through your favorite podcasting app. For idthuture, I'm andrew mcDermott. Thanks for listening.
[00:41:32] Speaker A: Visit
[email protected] and intelligentdesign.org. This program is copyright Discovery institute and recorded by its center for Science and Culture.
