Dave Cockayne’s personal blog

I’ve been reading or reading a lot of Richard Dawkins recently and also watching some programs about what happened in Dover. (I love the pastafarian movement that arose as a result of what happened)

Something struck me, especially when watching Ken Miller talking about Michael Behe’s ‘irreducible complexity‘. I think the idea of irreducible complexity is a non starter as an argument if you watch Ken Miller’s lecture he destroys the argument pretty solidly. As a programmer/designer however, I can see a remarkable beauty in the way genes work. It is common for programmers to create libraries of code, modules, components and objects that do a specific task. These blocks of code can be reused, doing the same task in different projects, often many ready made chunks of code are bought together to play a part in a project that accomplishes a completely different task than the one the code was initially designed for.

Ken Miller demonstrates exactly the same idea happening at a genetic level, the dna behind one portion of the bacterial flagellum is exactly the same piece of code, that when used in isolation is a ‘type 3 syringe’ used for injecting dna into cells. Same code, completely different outcome.

Programmers (who are without doubt, intelligent designers) long ago adopted the practice and any computer science graduate will be familiar with the concept of writing reusable code. It seems that programmers hit upon a highly efficient and successful method for development that is far more efficient in the long run than having to write new code from scratch in every new project.

The similarities between the practices of programmers and the elegant workings of life at a genetic level may be a pure coincidence, or it may be the telltale finger print of intelligent design.

There is a testable way to tell and I think that if discovered it could disprove, or a least cast serious doubt on the theory of evolution.

Evolution relies on the ideas of ‘descent with modification’ and diversification of species.

Descent with modification basically says that you inherit your dna from your parents. Sometimes there will be a copy error or mutation and you as an individual will have a new and unique piece of code. If that code change gives you a survival advantage there is a good chance that you will do well, have children who will also do well and the new code starts to spread through a population.

Diversification of species says that when two populations are split and continue to evolve separately, after time they may no longer be able to interbreed and they will eventually become two separate species with a common ancestor.

So why might these ideas spell doom for evolution?

Because of the glowing bunnies.

We know that it is technically possible for an intelligent designer (in this case a french geneticist) to take a gene that produces a certain protein from one species and drop it into a completely different species and the gene may carry on producing the same protein. In this example a gene for flouresence is taken out of a jellyfish and injected into a rabbit embryo. The result is the gene creates the same protein in the rabbit that it did in the jellyfish and the end result is a ‘glow in the dark bunny’.

This experiment breaks across wide species boundaries and also breaks descent with modification, it would be impossible for evolution to do this but relatively easy for an intelligent designer.

If it can be shown that two widely separate species like a jellyfish and rabbit or a cow and a cabbage etc have identical, highly complex gene sequences that were not in a common ancestor then evolution is in trouble. For that to happen it requires an outside influence meddling with an organism’s genes as I would imagine it is statistically almost impossible for identical, highly complex sequences to evolve by chance repeatedly.

A few footnotes:

I’m no geneticist/evolutionary scientist and this is all speculation. It may also make absurd assumptions and be completely wrong, that’s what you get for not treating bloggers with a big dose of scepticism!

I don’t believe in intelligent design and I do believe in evolution.

Bacteria don’t count, horizontal gene transfer is well known in bacteria and even the ability to absorb foreign genes from the surrounding environment.

Filed by dave at 11:47 pm under Uncategorized
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