On Reading the Cell’s Signature | The BioLogos Forum

I've been commenting back and forth with Chuck O'Connor on John Loftus' blog. Unfortunately, Chuck denies the Bible and Christianity and see no value in them or those of us who believe in them. During the course of the exchange, I challenged him to provide a rebuttal to Stephen C. Meyer's book Signature in the Cell. He graciously provided an article to which I have linked to, written by Dr. Francisco Ayala, University Professor at the University of California, Irvine.

On Reading the Cell’s Signature | The BioLogos Forum

I thought it good to make comment on this essay. I have to admit to being profoundly disappointed. I expected to see a good argument that Meyer is wrong and that there no reason to think that our genetic structure was designed - scientifically. Instead, I see a bunch of philosophical drivel combined with bad theology.

How should a person of faith respond to Signature of the Cell? I am an evolutionary scientist who would suggest the following considerations.

The keystone argument of Signature of the Cell is that chance, by itself, cannot account for the genetic information found in the genomes of organisms. I agree. And so does every evolutionary scientist, I presume.

The article starts off well. I mean it sets me up for thinking that it will advance an alternate explanation for where the genetic information came from over time. Did he offer one? No, not here. He then says something very interesting to me:

Why, then, spend chapter after chapter and hundreds of pages of elegant prose to argue the point? It is as if in a book about New York, the author would tell us that New York is not in Europe, and then dedicate most of the book to advancing evidence that, indeed, truly, New York is not in Europe.

Signature of the Cell offers Intelligent Design (ID) as the alternative explanation to chance in order to account for genetic information. This suggestion turns out to be no more convincing than a proposal by the author of the book about New York, who having exhausted all possible ways of telling us that New York is not in Europe, would now offer Peoria as the alternative city to visit. We would rather read about New York’s architecture, splendid avenues, and great parks; about the rich culture and ethnic diversity of the city; about its restaurants, concert venues, theatres, and wonderful sights in and around the city. But regarding natural selection, genetics, ecology, development, physiology, and behavior in the evolution of genetic information, there is nothing substantive in Signature of the Cell.

Now I have not read all of Dr. Ayala's work, but in this essay he agrees that chance does not explain where genetic information comes from but never say where it does comes from but instead spends his time talking about how intelligent design is not the answer. Arguing that New york is not in Europe. We all agree. But he never says where New York is located. So where did the extra genetic information that had to be added to the first common ancestor come from if evolution is true? Ayala is silent in this article, but I believe that this is one of the points that Meyer is speaking of in his book.

Ayala wrote:

The human genome includes about twenty-five thousand genes and lots of other (mostly short) switch sequences, which turn on and off genes in different tissues and at different times and play other functional roles. There are also lots and lots of DNA sequences that are nonsensical. For example, there are about one million virtually identical Alu sequences that are each three-hundred letters (nucleotides) long and are spread throughout the human genome. Think about it: there are in the human genome about twenty-five thousand genes, but one million interspersed Alu sequences; forty times more Alu sequences than genes. It is as if the editor of Signature of the Cell would have inserted between every two pages of Meyer’s book, forty additional pages, each containing the same three hundred letters. Likely, Meyer would not think of his editor as being “intelligent.” Would a function ever be found for these one million nearly identical Alu sequences? It seems most unlikely. In fact, we know how these sequences come about: one new Alu sequence appears in the genome for every ten newborns, generation after generation. The Designer at work? Unlikely: many of these sequences damage the genome causing abortion of the fetus during the early weeks of life.

Perhaps one could attribute the obnoxious presence of the Alu sequences to degenerative biological processes that are not the result of ID. But was the Designer incompetent or malevolent in not avoiding the eventuality of this degeneration? Come to think of it: why is it that most species become extinct? More than two million species of organisms now live on Earth. But the fossil record shows that more than ninety-nine percent of all species that ever lived became extinct. That is more than one billion extinct species. How come? Is this dreadful waste an outcome intended by the Designer? Or is extinction an outcome of degeneration of genetic information and biological processes? If so, was the Designer not intelligent enough or benevolent enough to avoid the enormity of this waste?

Ayala then tries to use things like the alu sequences to say that we aren't designed because it's poor design. This is a mumbo jumbo philosophical argument. something like what Hitchens, Dennet, or Harris uses. How can you assume that it's a poor design or a bug if you don't know what the original specs were? how do you know it's not "feature"? You don't. I'm an engineer and when I write code myself, what sense would it make for someone to look at my code and nitpick if they don't know what the design criteria and functions were supposed to be? Or even without knowing what all the limiting factors are, you are ill equipped to evaluate a design!

Then Ayala goes all theological:

I do think that people of faith may find in the world many reasons that support their belief in God. But I don’t think that intelligent design is one of them. Quite the contrary. Indeed, there are good reasons to reject ID on religious grounds, in addition to scientific grounds. The biological information encased in the genome determines the traits that the developing organism will have, in humans as well as in other organisms. But humans are chock-full of design defects. We have a jaw that is not sufficiently large to accommodate all of our teeth, so that wisdom teeth have to be removed and other teeth straightened by an orthodontist. Our backbone is less than well designed for our bipedal gait, resulting in back pain and other problems in late life. The birth canal is too narrow for the head of the newborn to pass easily through it, so that millions of innocent babies—and their mothers—have died in childbirth throughout human history.

I could go on about human features that betray a design that certainly is not intelligent. I will add only one more consideration. More that twenty percent of all human pregnancies end in spontaneous abortion during the first two months of pregnancy. That is because the human genome, the human reproductive system, is so poorly designed. Do I want to attribute this egregiously defective design to God, to the omnipotent and benevolent God of the Christian faith? No, I don’t. It would not do to say that God designed intelligently the human genome and that it then decayed owing to natural processes. If God would have designed the human genome, surely He would have done it so that this enormous misfortune would not happen. Think of it: twenty percent of all human pregnancies amount to twenty million abortions every year. I shudder at the thought of this calamity being attributed to God’s specific design of the human genome. To me, this attribution would amount to blasphemy.

Who are you or I to judge the design defective. Does the pot have the right to tell the potter that it is defective? Efficiency can't be measured with the information that we have and we don't know what all the purposes are that are being met by the design being like it is. It's blasphemous to call what God has done as being poorly designed or executed. You can say you don;t understand. you can say it makes no sense to you, but who died and made you, me, or Ayala the standard of what benevolence is or what as good design for the human body is. This is poor and short-sited theology where man is the standard and God is held accountable to that standard instead of the other way around.In case you are unfamiliar with the imagery in Jeremiah 18 and Romans 9, we are the pots and God is the potter.

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