Re: [asa] Amazing Proteins

On May 4, 2008, at 4:34 AM, Iain Strachan wrote:

>
> In summary, if even intelligent designers, such as Shakespeare and
> Mozart are utterly dependent on a small finite set of elemental
> building blocks that they can string together, then shouldn't one also
> give the Blind Watchmaker some credit for being able to construct
> living organisms from a similar set of molecules?
>
> What I am wondering is how my two examples differ from yours?
>
> Regards,
> Iain
>

Protein transcription is indeed amazing specifically in that it works
*almost* all of the time. It's the fact that there are a small but non
zero number of errors in transcription that drive the evolutionary
process. If it was very error prone then it doesn't work. If there
were no errors -- which appears to me to be the unintended implication
of Mike's posts that Pim is picking up on -- then it wouldn't work
either. But, this also introduces a theological problem. The same
errors that produce the diversity of life also cause genetic diseases,
even death. In addition to transcription errors, proteins usually but
again not always fold correctly. So, you have prion diseases such as
BSE which are caused by the mis-folding of proteins.

I happen to like an ID/TE synthesis that is apparently being proposed
here but we need to be real about the problems raised. Recently, some
science bloggers were all over Francisco Ayala's evolutionary-based
theodicy in his (new?) book because he was profiled recently in the
NYT. I am sorry but as time goes on I am being more and more convinced
that all theodicies are teh stoopid.

Rich Blinne
Member ASA

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Received on Sun May 4 08:41:59 2008