Evolutionary Biology and Dawkins

I listened to the Dawkins V. Lennox debate held at UAB not so recently and though I dont remember many details of the debait, I do remember that Dawkins was getting his lunch ate. Partially due to the format, and partially because he is not a philosopher or theologian and doesn't see ideas all the way through. He is an Evolutionary Biologists and that says it all for me.

Because of a handful of debunked experiments and especially due to a lab experiment using a synthesized atmosphere (now know to be inaccurate) representing the primordial earth that produced amino acid like chemicals: he finds it easy to believe that life sprang up by chance. Chance and a long time allowed the formation of complex amino acids that coalesced into protienes (that actally was functional) and phospho-lipids formed too and yada...yada... yada...primative "cell-like" systems became more and more organized until we formed the first single celled organisim. which then lead to us a bit later.

What he yada...yada...yada-ed was a very complex and elegant system of DNA -> RNA -> protein that is almost entirely irreducably complex.

Some Basics first: DNA is like a master instruction book for all cells in the body. it has the code that the body uses when "making" parts for the cell. DNA is culmped into chromosomes and has repeating segments along its length that act as marker points. Certain protiens are always setting ready to go to the instruction book and make copies of the reque3sted section. That copy is then sent to the "fab shop" and made into other protiens.
For each set of three DNA base bairs one base unit of a protien (amino acid) is coded. After a bunch of amino acids are put in a chain they lump and fold and twist into some kind of 3-D mass that has a function. It may be hemoglobin (transports O2 in the blood), or collagen (ligaments, tendons, cartledge and scar tissue) or some other very specific protien that is "fabricated" only when there is an environmental stress, afterwhich it is dismantled or breaks down.

For those of you familiar with the DNA --> RNA --> Protien sorry for the digression. Okay, back to the point.

He (Dawkins) presumes that 1.) DNA found its order/ sequence by chance 2.) that a system of transcribing (copying) only a needed portion of DNA's message into RNA was by chance 3.) transportation of the copy to a remote "fab shop" was spurriously developed 4.) the sequence of the copied code is useful for putting t/g amino acids 5.) the sequence of amino acids produced was useful to the cell and happened by chance (guided by natural selection). there is sooooo much assumption here you could drive a bus through the gaps at each assumption!

Dawkins says that you dont need God to explain how things have gotten to the state we now observe (this is classic Darwinian reductionism) they apply Occam's Razor and say that it is more simple and less assuming to explain speciation and geology using "hard scientific evidence" than to invoke God. But this only gives a means of how the earth came to its form and population of life AFTER THE EARTH AND LIFE WERE IN PLACE. Tthey make a giant leap of faith in banking on the logic of natural selection and long tern statistics. besides which they still have not expliained why "life" came into existance and why "life" wants to live...also where did the truism of natural selection get its truth????

My father in law once said:
if you take all the necessary pieces and parts to make a whole house, put them in a big cargo plane and dump them over your home site, what are the odds that they will fall into place and make a ready to use house? 1/billion, 1/trillion, 1/gazillion??? how bout 1/infinity? we all know it wont happen, but technically there is a "chance".

The reason we know it will never happen is the house must be built in a general order; things put in place in a certain order, it cant happen all at once. Your flooring cannot be installed before the subfloor, the shingles cant go on before the decking, the paint cant just splatter in place with out getting on the trim....it is irreducibly complex! ... it has design....

Irreducable Complexity

This is the statistician's mile high hurdle, when things have to happen in a certain order they get harder and harder to happen by chance.

I have been working on a quote that I want to coin "Scientists are the worlds worst about confusing knowledge about how something works for an explaination about how (or why) it came to be" just because I know almost everything about molecular biology, doesnt mean I can explain why this protiene is capable of performing its action, I only know how it will act.