Today I had a great trip to see an old friend and his new house on Onset beach. They have an excellent view with the beach just across the road. He showed me all the modifications they had made and are making to modernize the house. It is quite nice. We drove to Woods Hole on Cape Cod for lunch with additional excellent water views including some of the oceanographic vessels.
Yesterday I talked about the great amount of proof that exists for the theory of evolution including geologic and isotopic dating. This evidence has been available for some time. The newer evidence comes from the genetic code itself. As gene sequencing has advanced an incredible amount of data has become available. There is so much that it is difficult to find computer systems large enough to store and analyze it. The combination of sequence data from a growing number of organisms with extreme computing power has allowed one to do genetic analysis predominately on the computer. NIH sponsors GenBank http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/Genbank/ which is one of the largest databases available. If you know a sequence this will tell you which other organisms contain that same sequence. The database currently exceeds 100 gigabases. Once the sequences have been established there is no more need for test tubes. This resource makes it possible to determine the relationships between organisms exclusively on the computer and you can do it from home!
The number of differences between two species is relatively proportional to the time in the distant past in which their common ancestor existed. This estimate of time can be compared to those from geology and isotopic dating. In general, they all agree. The answer is a long time ago. Dating techniques that are so different chemically that give the same answer are very difficult to refute. How could they all be wrong? The only alternative explanation is that the intelligent designer made the world in 4004 BC but did it in such a way as to make it look very old. It is an interesting theory but one for which there is no scientific evidence. By the way, an example of intelligent design is provided in the recent movie “The Hitchers Guide to the Universe”. All current evidence says that the world is very old and that evolution took a long time making one small change at a time. The changes were subjected to natural selection with those that were beneficial at that time and in that environment carrying on to the next generation. There is no need for intelligent design.
Another argument is that our biology is extremely complex. Any intelligent designer would not have been so messy. Groups are now attempting to make a simple organism from scratch. I am sure that it will be much less messy than those organisms that evolved the natural way.
One more thought, by examining the sequences of related genes, i.e. those that produce products that have a similar function one can see how one was derived from another. Often we see that a gene is duplicated on a chromosome and that the two copies start to evolve separately. One can examine the sequences and see how they diverged, one mutation at a time eventually taking on different functions in the cell’s metabolism. Sometimes on sees sequence changes that make no functional difference. Why would an intelligent designer bother with changes that make no difference?
One can never exclude intelligent design but it isn’t needed to explain how we got here.
1 comment:
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