Origin of Life ~ Interview with Stephen C. Meyer & Chuck Missler

Very good discussion. I was fortunate to hear Dr. Meyer speak a few years ago at the Strategic Perspectives Conference.
He recently published the book, Darwin's Doubt: The Explosive Origin of Animal Life and the Case for Intelligent Design and in 2009 published Signature in the Cell: DNA and the Evidence of Intelligent Design.

Thanks Tryph, I noticed the vids are short ones, plan on listening soon!

Lots of good stuff in that first short vid!

"Digital code DNA functions like a software program."
Information always comes from an intelligent source.
A program demands a programer.

Genesis 1:2 in the Hebrew has embedded in it an auto correlation error detection and error correction coding.  This was discovered by some that study information theory and information flow. 

And yes, intelligence design requires an intelligent designer.  Guided evolution as the earth was commanded to bring for life of plants and critters as we find in Genesis One. Evolutionary process itself had to be intelligently designed and implemented by an intelligent designer.  Not just the results of the process but the creation of the process itself.

Without the moving and motion of the cell's microtubular columns or filaments, these conveyors, that move material around inside the cells, without these nothing would happen much inside the cells, The DNA would not get opened up and read, the DNA would not get reproduced. The RNA would be laying around doing nothing.  There seems to be some for of "other world" guidance of the microbulin filaments, that guide their motions.  The theories of quantum consciesousness of Hammerof and Penrose is particularly interesting to consider when and how the machineary is timed and guided, even at the point and level of reading the so called "junk DNA" in an epi-genetic crossing over on the recombination of DNA during its own reproduction on cell division.  It is like there is some form of "ghost in the machine" of the microtubulin dimmers and their filaments that decides when ande were they get assembled and are guided to go.  Without these filaments DNA and RNA would do nothing but dissolve over time.

Psalm 14

      The fool has said in his heart, “There is no God.”
            They are corrupt, they have committed abominable deeds;
            There is no one who does good.
      The LORD has looked down from heaven upon the sons of men
            To see if there are any who understand,
            Who seek after God.
      They have all turned aside, together they have become corrupt;
            There is no one who does good, not even one.
      Do all the workers of wickedness not know,
            Who eat up my people as they eat bread,
            And do not call upon the Lord?
      There they are in great dread,
            For God is with the righteous generation.
      You would put to shame the counsel of the afflicted,
            But the LORD is his refuge.
      Oh, that the salvation of Israel would come out of Zion!
            When the LORD restores His captive people,
            Jacob will rejoice, Israel will be glad.


  It truly IS a no-brainer.  It takes a heckuva lot more faith to believe in anything other than God creating everything.  But alas, Recognizing that fact would make those who do not accept His authorship accountable to the God of all creation, eh? 

It leaves me even more slack-jawed every time I learn of yet another "coincidence" in the construction of the universe or mankind that makes the concept of God as Creator inescapable.

Truly foolish are they that believe what they say is truth rather than accept what is undeniable.

Thanks for your comments/input friends.



Stephen Meyer is a believer and he has his foolish naysayers.
Science is fascinating & good to see/read/hear Meyer's explaining God's handiwork.

Related article from Omega Letter...


Mitochondrial Eve and Y-Chromosome Adam

Tuesday, May 05, 2015 
Wendy Wippel 


According to Scripture, God made Earth for one reason: "He did not create it to be empty, but formed it to be inhabited" Isaiah 45:18. He made the earth, then Adam and Eve, and through them, the world was filled with all of us. A story now discredited, I know, yet solidly documented by modern science.


Specifically, molecular biology. As in DNA. New forensic DNA techniques have yielded incredibly detailed information about man’s earliest history. Even the scientists involved are blown away:

• The DNA record is a book that “details human history, written inside the cells of every man”; a history “way beyond written records or even stone inscriptions” said Brian Sykes, the author of Seven Daughters of Eve.
  
  
• “Every drop of human blood contains a history book written in the language of our genes.” Jonathan Wells, author of The Story of Man. 
  
  

It’s true.  New techniques reveal a history of genetic changes over time in every cell of the human body, creating a genetic history book that we have only in the last decade really understood how to read.


Here’s where it really gets interesting. This genetic history book, incredibly, confirms the book of Genesis—and beyond—in exquisite detail!


Before we move on, a crash course in genetics is in order. All you will need, anyway. Most of the DNA, as you may remember from grade school science, is contained inside the nucleus of every body cell.  All but one small piece of DNA—one chromosome—that hangs out in the mitochondria of each cell (mitochondria, as you may also remember, being the power plants located in each cell).


Most of the time, DNA is like an unwound ball of yarn floating in the nucleus, and the string of yarn is made up of four building blocks called bases: adenine, guanine, cytosine and thymine, abbreviated by C, T, A, and G, 3.2 billion times.  
So when the entire human genome was published? It looked like this: 
 
cttagctaggcttttacctttgagattcgctgctagattcAAAGGGTCGAGGTCCCTCCGGGAATT


For more than a million pages. It would have taken a human 50 years to type, and ten years to read aloud. But with four bases, with the capability of being arranged in an almost infinite number of ways in those 3.2 billion bases available.  A brilliant way of making possible the almost infinite variety of those humans that would inhabit the earth.


Then God added another level of creating variety: reproduction.


When the cell is about to divide, the stringy DNA that normally floats around in the nucleus condenses into what can be thought of as DNA skeins of yarn called chromosomes.  Chromosomes pair up before division but do so randomly, so when two brand new humans are created, each offspring gets a grab bag of chromosomes that came from both parents, so genes from both parents contribute to the baby’s genetic make-up.


Most of us have probably had kids, and seen this up-close and personal. Dad’s hair but Mom’s love of reading, like my younger daughter.


Over time, however, genetic mutations can happen. We’re most familiar with the ones that cause disease. Those mutations happen in a section of the genome that codes for proteins, cell messengers or other essential substances produced that, without which, the body cannot function properly. Alzheimer’s disease, for example, is believed, at least in part, to result from a mutation in an enzyme (whose gene has yet to be identified) that causes a transmembrane protein in the neurons to fragment. The now well-known breast cancer genes (BRCA 1 and 2) have a mutation in the genetic sequence that normally corrects errors in DNA replication, causing cancers, including breast.


What you don’t hear much about are the mutations that occur in “junk” DNA, sequences that don’t appear to code for any products in the traditional sense and which make up about 90% of the genome.  It is these mutations that are currently opening up human origins.  Because they coincidentally (remember, the Rabbis say that coincidence isn’t a Kosher word) satisfy the two requirements for that could serve that function:


1)  It has to be DNA that isn’t mixed together during reproduction. (Cause once it’s mixed, you can’t separate the signals)


2)  It has to be DNA with a mutation rate that, like Goldilock’s porridge, is just right.  If too fast there would be way too many mutations, over all earth history, to make any sense out of. If too slow, there wouldn’t be enough changes to do any analysis on.


Remember for our purposes we are looking at accumulating mutations over all of human history. Coding DNA appears not to mutate much at all over multiple generations, the reason for that, when you think about it, is obvious. Mutations in coding regions cause disease, and often the person carrying that mutation doesn’t stay alive long enough to pass it on.


So… if normal DNA won’t do the trick, how did this research progress? 
 
Coincidentally (?), there are two and only two end-arounds.  First, the Y-chromosome: (Y-chromosomes, being only possessed by males), do not get mixed together during reproduction, so that your father has his father’s Y-chromosome, who has his father’s, who…you get the idea.  All the way back to Adam.


Second, in the developing baby, that one chromosome in the mitochondria. As it happens (coincidentally),  the mitochondria that the sperm carries have a gene that marks them as something to be destroyed by the then one-celled body of the baby in progress, so that only the mitochondria (and the mitochondrial chromosome) of the mother is preserved. So no mixing there, either.


The first study, a landmark study, was published by Cann and Wilson in 1997. Cann and Wilson had collected DNA from women all over the world, specifically collecting some of it from very old and largely isolated populations like the Australian aborigines, to get the most diverse test sample they could.   Then they analyzed the markers in their samples (markers being nothing more than places where a mutation had occurred), and (as the average mutation rate in that section of the junk DNA is known) calculated how long ago each mutation happened. And with the help of some very sophisticated software, they were able to answer the important question (a giant logic problem): How did all these mutations relate to each other?  They expected, according to their current theories, to find multiple individual lines of descent.


But they didn’t. They were shocked by their findings in fact.


Despite the prevailing theory of the time (mankind evolved separately all over the earth) their data showed that all of the women tested had descended from one single human female who lived somewhere around northern Africa. They called her African Eve (and later bowing to the political correctness current to our era, revised it to Mitochondrial Eve).  Mitochondrial Eve they defined as most recent common ancestor, or the MRCA.





Don’t be fooled into thinking, however, that they were thinking this was the real Eve.  Au contraire. What they found (simplified to only 11 subjects)


What they published?  A version of what’s below with multiple other lines of descent filled in around the actual single ancestor that their research clearly demonstrated. Because according their figure (which I can’t display here for copyright reasons) they “knew those other lines had to be there”.


In other words, because of their preconceived theories (that lots of other people were alive, because humans evolved simultaneously in various places), they made some up.


(Let me just say here, as someone that did 15+ years of university research, that is the most ridiculous, unacceptable, and hilarious research conclusion that I have ever seen.)


But the DNA had more to reveal.   Another researcher, Peter Underhill released his findings using the Y-chromosome to look at human origins, releasing his data in 2000...  And he found the exact same thing!  All human males descended from a single human male that lived right in the same neighborhood as Eve.


Shocker. Scripture itself tells us that all humans descended from that first pair:  God “has made of one blood every nation of men to dwell upon the whole face of the earth, having determined ordained times and the boundaries of their dwelling.” Acts 17:26


Imagine that.  But the scientists still refused to believe it, and finally they found what they believed was an Achilles heel. According to the intrinsic dating, using the average mutation rate in the Y-chromosome DNA, Adam seemed to be much younger than Eve.  Like several thousand years younger.


Oh, Happy Day for the scientists, and headlines around the world screamed, “Adam and Eve never met”.


Apparently, they need to brush up on their Bible. Because what they found confirms exactly what the Torah records.


Remember that what their technique defines is the MRCA, the most recent common ancestor.


That, in fact, is Noah, and here’s why.  Noah’s sons would have all had his Y chromosome, so that single signal, by their methods, would appear to be the MRCA, as the four males on the ark carried the same Y chromosome. . (Four identical Y-chromosomes, with no differences.) And Noah, did in fact, live after Eve.


Eve, however, shared the ark with thee unrelated females, who would have all had a different versions of the mitochondrial chromosome. Four diverse mitochondrial chromosomes, all of which, however would trace back to Eve.


All three of the other women would, in fact, have descended from Eve, so she would be the genuine MRCA of all future women throughout the history of the world.
Since Noah and sons all had an identical Y chromosome, however, that line appears to stop at Noah, because you don’t see any changes further back.


Their own data actually supports the Biblical account!  Either they didn’t think through their own data, or they have no idea what the Bible says.
Or both.  And it gets better.


"African Adam” (i.e. Noah) lived in a period of time in which genetic diversity plummeted. (A rather common genetic event termed a bottleneck). And this Adam (you can’t make this stuff up) is described by scientists as living in time when lots of other humans existed, but, of the human males, only his line survived.


Shocker.  Wonder how many of our tax dollars it cost to come to that conclusion.  It’s been right there in Genesis all the time.


Psalm 139;16,  interestingly, appears to refer to DNA as a book that dictates the body’s development: Thine eyes did see my substance, yet being unperfect; and in thy book all my members were written, which in continuance were fashioned, when as yet there was none of them.


Which reminds me, actually of Sir Francis Bacon, who devised the scientific method taught in every school today. He observed that, "a little science estranges a man from God, but a lot of science brings him back.”


Every time.


A curious verse in Psalm says, “let this be written for future generation, that a people yet to come may praise the Lord." As Scripture is increasingly echoed by scientific headlines, let His praises ring!

http://www.omegaletter.com/articles/articles.asp?ArticleID=8043

That's Wendy's wheelhouse, sure enough!