What the World Needs Now
5 The Genesis Conflict - The Genes of Genesis
[ Music ] >> Tonight's lecture is titled The Genes of Genesis. And somebody pointed out to me that there's quite a similarity there between genes and genices. One could actually read the genes E's. And that's quite an interesting observation. You see, God also says, "I am." He is, so why can't genes E's? Well, we're going to talk tonight about the philosophy behind natural selection and the science of evolution in general. And the founder of this modern theory is Charles Darwin, who accepted a position of ships naturalist on the HMS Beagle, and studied the diversity of organisms while this ship was traveling around the world, in particular to draw maps of South America and the like. Of course, he didn't actually come up with the original concepts. They have been around for a long, long time, even since the time of the Greeks. And Charles Darwin's grandfather was already a proponent of naturalistic ideas. He also had theological training. And Charles Darwin believed at the time that he was active on the ship. He believed at that stage that God had created immutable, unchangeable species. You see, the mindset at that time was such that people believed that everything that exists on the planet had been created individually by God. And of course, naturalistic science excludes that possibility. Now, when Charles Darwin was traveling on this Beagle, he came up with the idea of natural selection, and we'll talk about that in some detail in a moment. Basically, this is the concept. If you have three giraffes, for example, the ones with the longer necks would have a selective advantage when it comes to feeding on high branches. And therefore, they would be selected for and have more offspring and eventually replace those with short necks. That's basically what natural selection teaches. There is a counter concept which was known as Lamarckism. Now Lamarck taught that the animals tried to reach the higher branches and eventually, the necks got longer. You see? So those are the two opposing concepts that existed at this time when Darwin formulated his theory. Of course, Darwinism is recognized as the scientifically logical theory whereas Lamarckism is discredited these days. I always put it to my students this way. Do birds fly because they have wings or do they have wings because they fly? Which one is correct? Which one do you believe is correct? Well, obviously, they fly because they have wings. That's why they fly. So, you first have to have the wings and then you can fly, and if you have different wings, well, then one can fly better than the other one and then natural selection can start operating. Birds did not wish to fly and therefore developed wings because then all of us would have wings too, right? Because man has been wanting to fly forever. So science tells us that the object has to be there before selection can take place and that is pretty logical. So Darwinism is superior to Lamarckism. Now, it's interesting that science readily recognizes this but when push comes to shove, then often they fall back to Lamarckism. That's very interesting. Remember yesterday I gave a lecture on the evolution of man. And one of the theories that they have as to why man began walking upright is that he lived in a time when the grasslands took over, right? And so they couldn't see over the grass and what did they do? They stood up on their hind legs to look over the grass. And this eventually led to the development of upright gait. Is that Darwinism or Lamarckism? That's Lamarckism. Isn't that interesting? So science shoots down Lamarckism but uses it when it finds it useful. The actual fact that you should conjecture differently on that issue. Now, remember what I said when Charles Darwin was traveling on this ship, the Beagle, and he developed all these ideas and took them back into society, he was actually quite a shy man about it. But fortunately for him, he had another man, you can see with a much sternum expression on the face, Haxley, who was then known as Darwin's Bulldog. And he took up the challenge and championed Darwinism to the scientific world and he's credited with conquering force science in a debate with Bishop Wilberforce, which he didn't actually win on the grounds of his science, but won on the grounds of the ridicule and contempt placed upon the science by the Bishop. So you see, the attitude was what determined the winner and not necessarily the message, which is quite sad. And it's a good warning to us to be careful how we approach things. Now, Charles Darwin was very interested when they came around the coast of South America, when they came to this group of islands known as the Galapagos Islands. And on these Galapagos Islands, he found some very interesting creatures, some of which we looked at last night like these giant tortoises and those beautiful Galapagos Marine iguanas and all of those interesting creatures, but amongst them also these finches. And these finches were unique. Some of them had large beaks, some of them had small beaks, some of them had much larger beaks, and these beaks were adapted to certain circumstances. So for example, those with the larger beaks could crush hard seeds and open them up and reach inside. Those with the smaller beaks had to feed on different things, so some of them even developed the method of using tools to get hold of grubs and what have you inside the bark of plants. And so each one of these was slightly different. Now this was something very strange. You see on the mainland, songbirds are credited with this variety. But here the finches showed this amazing variety. Now if you imagine the time frame in which Darwin worked, genetics was unknown. Gregor Mendel had done his work, but it lay somewhere on a dust pile in some monastery. Nobody knew anything about genetics. So how inherited characters were transferred was unknown. And then there was this idea that God had created immutable, unchangeable species. And there was a scientist by the name of Linnaeus who took all the creatures that he knew and classified them according to what was to be known as the binominal nomenclature. So everything got two names. So for example we are Homo sapiens. We are Homo sapiens, two names. And each creature got its name and it was considered to be a unique creation. And so the species numbers increased enormously until we today have millions of species around. Now when Charles Darwin looked at these creatures he thought about this and said now isn't it possible that we started out with one finch family some time ago on these islands and that all of these evolved out of that original parent pair. Isn't that logical assumption? And yes it is a logical assumption. It is quite probable that this is a variation that developed there on these islands. But what Charles Darwin did then is he said well then God did not create immutable, unchangeable species. In fact there is no such thing as a creation. So God was thrown out of the equation. Was it necessary to throw God out? That is the question that we will have to answer tonight. The fact of the matter is it does seem as though whatever was there was not unchangeable. Well science has come a long way since then and we have a whole theory of how everything came into being and let's take it from the beginning and see what science teaches today. So how did life begin? Well science teaches that this earth originally was very different to what it is today. There was a volcanic activity. The atmosphere was totally different to what it is today. In fact the atmosphere consisted of gases like methane, ammonia, hydrogen, water, these components. And a scientist by the name of Stanley Miller came along and he simulated this atmosphere, passed some sparks through it and then trapped whatever was formed at the bottom and analyzed it in a laboratory. And lo and behold here were organic materials. And so he conjectured that originally on the planet there could have been an organic soup with lots of organic molecules which then fortuitously formed themselves over long periods of time into the molecules which are necessary for life and then through processes eventually came together to form the first living organisms. Now that's all very nice and well except that there are a number of problems with this. Firstly the atmosphere would have to be one that excludes oxygen. Very important. So the primitive earth reducing atmosphere is supposed to have had hydrogen, ammonia, carbon dioxide, methane, nitrogen and water. And where did these come from? Well they stated from volcanic gases although volcanic gases are also associated with carbon monoxide, sulfur dioxide. So it doesn't really quite fit but nevertheless if it had however been like the present atmosphere which contains oxygen then the evolution of molecules would have been impossible because oxygen burns up everything. Oxygen would destroy everything as it developed through the process of oxidation. So all scientists agree it would have to have been a reducing atmosphere. Now what did Hal then do? He passed sparks through such an atmosphere and then trapped whatever was formed and analyzed it. If he had left it there in the atmosphere for another cycle then everything that would have formed would have been destroyed by the next process. So he had to have a trap. Would they have been a trap somewhere on the planet before? Probably not but there's another problem and that is the various molecules of life that had to form needed very different circumstances. For example if you look at the amino acids you have different amino acids and each one of these amino acids has this NH2 group, this amino group over here. And this NH2 group had to of course be derived from this atmosphere and it comes from the ammonia. But now if you have ammonia in the atmosphere then sugars don't form. So there is a big problem. Plus you need a very acid environment in order for these to form and then you would have to have only the right ones to form and that would not happen because when you pass these sparks through it you get left-handed ones, you get right-handed ones and you get all kinds of amino acids where the amino group is attached to any one of these carbons along the chain and not necessarily to that first carbon next to this group over here which is the carboxyl group. And so if you have just one wrong amino acid somewhere in a chain everything is non-functional. So here's a major problem that you needed the right circumstances plus you needed mechanisms of selecting just those amino acids which are useful to life. One wrong one in there and you would have a problem. Plus even if you get the amino acids how do you get them to come together and join together? You need enzymes for that. That means you need a protein to make a protein. So who was first the protein or the protein that makes the protein? See it's a bit of a problem. The next problem is if you want to have the building blocks of our DNA what our genes are formed of then you need totally different circumstances. For these to form you have to take all the nitrogen out of the atmosphere, change it into a cyanide solution, multiply that by 10, dissolve it in the ocean and then you can get these molecules but then you wouldn't get anything else. If you're going to make these sugars again as we spoke about earlier that you need in the DNA molecule for example like the ribose well then you're not allowed to have ammonia. If you don't have ammonia it don't have amino acids. So you would have to have many planets in order to create these things. Now one of the science is saying it's not possible here so maybe it happened in space. You have a theory there which is called pan-spermion. Now this DNA molecule is another amazing story of life. Even if you get all the building blocks to form how would you get it to form a string containing all the information that you need for life? How would you get it to do that? It has never ever been demonstrated in a laboratory. It needs a very complex enzyme system that will form these high energy bonds that are locked into this molecule and the probability of these molecules forming is so remote so that we could say they are non-existent. So let's have a look at what the probability would be for example of a bomb exploding under a pile of wood going boom and then falling down from the sky and forming this perfect functional little house. What would the probability be? Well the probability is very very remote. Let's give it a very good probability or a very poor one. In fact it's even much worse than this. Let's say the probability is 1 in 10 to the power of 80. Now what is that? That sounds like a very small figure. 10 to the power of 80 is what physics claims is the number of particles in the entire universe. Particles. That means not only atoms but subparticles, electrons, neutrons, quarks, neutrons, protons in the entire universe. How many atoms in a pinhead? Billions and billions and billions and billions and billions and billions. So imagine how many atoms in the entire universe? It sounds mind-boggling but it's only 10 to the power of 80. It's not a very big number when you look at it but that is really a mind-boggling number 10 with 80 zeros behind it. So that would be the probability. What would be the probability of a simple gene coming into existence by chance? Well there are three nuclear tides needed to code for one amino acid in a protein and let's take a simple protein that has 100 amino acids. Your hemoglobin for example has 600 amino acids. So let's take a simple protein, 100 amino acids. You need 300 nuclear tides in the right sequence. What's the probability of that happening by chance? Well the probability is 10 to the power of 127. That is unfortunately boom New York City has been established by a nuclear explosion. Do you believe that? You would have to have that kind of faith. Now if we look at this DNA molecule it is a masterly construction. It consists of these double helixes forming the framework of phosphorus molecules then the basis in between and in the sequence in which they occur these bases you have the information for everything that happens in the cell. Now these genes we call the genotype and when these genes are expressed we call that the phenotype. Alright let me explain these terms. It's very important that we understand how science pictures the evolutionary events around the genetic system. The genotype consists of all the genes actually present in a zygote. That's the fertilized egg. So all the genes that I have that's my genotype but not all the genes that I have are expressed. So that which is expressed is my phenotype. So if you want to have a look at your phenotype go and stand in front of a mirror and you'll see it that's your phenotype. Now there's a law in evolution which states the following. Natural selection can only operate at the level of the phenotype never the level of the genotype. Have you got that? Repeated. Natural selection can only operate at the level of the phenotype never the level of the genotype. Why not? Well let me illustrate with an example two people walk in wherever game park in a game park and let's say there are wild animals around in the game park and the one person is long and lean and the other person is short and plump and now a predator comes from behind the bush and attacks them. A lion, a bear, whatever you would like it to be and they both take off like greased lightning. Which one is probably going to end up being a meal? The short fat one, right? Okay. So short fat was the what? The phenotype. That's right. Short fat phenotype hasn't got a snowball's hope in hell against the lean mean phenotype. So by natural selection short fat goes long lean mean stays. Is that correct? That's how it works. The animal is not concerned with all the other information in your genes. It's just interested in how you look and how fast you run. Is that correct? That's it. So natural selection does not work at the level of the genotype. So what does work at the level of the genotype? How are genes changed over time? Not by natural selection but by mutations. That's right. And how do mutations take place? They are random. They take place by chance and once they are expressed in the phenotype then they can be selected for. Does that make sense? Now remember Charles Darwin didn't know anything about this. Let me simplify this for you so that everybody can understand this. Now I know that I'm speaking to some who have biological training and some who have no biological training. So I'm trying here to target all of you. So if I shoot over your heads tonight there will be plenty that you can take home with at the end of the day in spite of that. If I shoot too low for your liking then please tolerate that because there are people here that would otherwise take nothing home with them. Is that fair? Good. So let's sum up. This is your genotype. That's the information in your genes in your DNA. The phenotype is what you look like. That's what we said. Natural selection operates at the level of the phenotype. It doesn't operate at that level. That's where chance operates. Chance through mutations. Fine. Let's put that into another model. Here we have a book of instructions on how to build an aeroplane. Here's a book of instructions with detailed instructions on how to build an aeroplane. The book of instructions in our analogy is what? The genotype. The DNA is a book of instructions on how to build a human being. Isn't that correct? All right. And the phenotype is the actual aeroplane. Now question. Who wrote the book? Well who wrote the book? Obviously some intelligent designer wrote the book in this case, right? Correct? But in our analogy, who wrote the book? Chance. Or as you guys said, chance. I can say it. Chance wrote the book just so that you have another accent to contend with. All right. Chance wrote the book. That's incredible. With all the information as to how to build the aeroplane. Now that's fascinating. That is really monstrous. That's terrific. Let's play this game out. I have a book. Here it is. And let's assume, for argument's sake, that this book has now come into existence by chance, mutations. And all the information for whatever it is we're going to build is in here. In this case, all the information for my aeroplane has now by chance appeared. And here it is in this book. This is great. So now I'm going to take this book and I'm going to put it down over here on the floor. There it is. It's in my bookshelf. There it is. And I'm going to wait for the aeroplane to appear. After all, I have all the information it has come about by chance. There it is. And it's all there. Now, all it has to happen is the aeroplane must come. How long am I going to wait? How long am I going to wait? Well, come on. Forever. I'm going to wait forever and ever and ever. Easy enough for the information to come into existence by itself. Yes or no? No? If I don't have a mechanism that will translate this information into the aeroplane, then my aeroplane will never appear. Is that correct or not? Okay. So my book by itself, even if it should come into existence by chance, is totally what? Useless. Thank you. Okay. Now that we've solved that problem, let's think about that. All right. So my book is really useless without a method of transcribing the information into the aeroplane. Now, what do I need to change the information into an aeroplane? You tell me. Well, I need some factory, don't I? And I need someone to intelligently interpret what is in that book so that I can get the aeroplane constructed. So I need some assembly line and I need some workers. Or if I don't have workers, what do I need? I need tools and machines, robots, if you like, that will do it for me. Is that correct? So question. Where or how did the design mechanisms get translated? How did the factory come into existence and how did the robots come into existence that will eventually build my machine so that I can test fly it? According to my analogy, a natural selection will only start operating when once what has happened. The aeroplane is there. So the whole mechanism to convert the information into the aeroplane, how did that have to come into existence? You tell me. You have two choices. Two choices because natural selection will only work once the aeroplane is there. Then I can only see, oh, it flies or it does not fly, right? So how did the mechanism come into existence? Give me the choices. The first one is chance. The second one is design. Design. That's your only possibility. Either it's chance or it is creative design. Those are the only two possibilities that we have. Okay, which one does science choose? Chants. Science chooses chance. Good. Now, when we read the DNA, this is a very complex situation. In fact, we don't even read the whole of a gene. We read only portions of it called introns and exons and the exons are transported and translated and taken outside. And then there is a highly complex factory with robots that changes the information from the gene. In other words, reads it and then translates it here into another form of messenger, which then passes out through the cell, combines with a structure we call a ribosome, which is an assembly line, a factory, and this factory then manufactures a protein, which in turn is manipulated and folded by another factory and transported, like with a railway system, if you like, to where it is needed and built into place. How did all of that come into existence? Well, if we're still not with anything tangible, we're just building something tangible. So how did it come into existence? You tell me? You have two choices, chance or design, because natural selection will only operate once the object is actually there. Wow, that's mind-boggling. Do you want to see what it looks like? Well, let's have a look. Here's an illustrious video, which is titled Unlocking the Mysteries of Life, the Scientific Case for Intelligent Design. You can actually get it at the back. It is sold at the back, and you can have a look at an animation of what happens. With computer animation, we can enter the cell to view this remarkable system at work. After entering the heart of the cell, we see the tightly wound strands of DNA, storehouses for the instructions necessary to build every protein in an organism. In a process known as transcription, a molecular machine first unwinds a section of the DNA helix to expose the genetic instructions needed to assemble a specific protein molecule. Another machine then copies these instructions to form a molecule known as messenger RNA. When transcription is complete, the slender RNA strand carries the genetic information through the nuclear-poor complex, the gatekeeper for traffic in and out of the cell nucleus. The messenger RNA strand is directed to a two-part molecular factory called a ribosome. After attaching itself securely, the process of translation begins. Inside the ribosome, a molecular assembly line builds a specifically sequenced chain of amino acids. These amino acids are transported from other parts of the cell, and then linked into chains often hundreds of units long. Their sequential arrangement determines the type of protein manufacture. When the chain is finished, it is moved from the ribosome to a barrel-shaped machine that helps fold it into the precise shape critical to its function. After the chain is folded into a protein, it is then released and shepherded by another molecular machine to the exact location where it is needed. It came about by how? Chance or design? That's your only option. There is no other. In actual fact, what you saw in this animation is highly, highly oversimplified. When you consider what happens in a cell as that DNA unfolds and the enzyme systems that are required to produce this molecule, it is mind-boggling. When it passes through that nuclear pore, it passes through with such precision that nothing else may enter and leave while this huge molecule is passing from one side to the other. Everything is highly precise with recognizing symbols and all kinds of structures and one mistake and you are a cabbage. It came about by chance or design because until that protein is actually there, natural selection cannot say whether it will work or whether it won. Any modification in the genes, in the genotype, to bring about any changes in the phenotype must also occur only through chance, through mutations. So if we take my book scenario, here's my book. If this book has instructions for an aeroplane and I now want to change the instructions to get another aeroplane, then how must those changes take place in here? By? Chance. That's right. You've got it. By chance. Or by design, one of the two. So now you get basic types of mutations, point mutations, chromosome mutations. Point mutations involve a chain or change in only a single nucleotide pair if you have base substitutions, additions, deletions, all of those. Now we've already said that the DNA code is a triple code. So let's say you have adenine, guenine, thymine, guenine, cytosine, adenine, etc. All along the line, there are four nucleotides. And let's say you deleted one. You deleted one. Boom. You take it away. Then instead of having AGT, GAG, GCA, you would have AGT, AGG, CAT, TCA, GGC, GGC, and the T. And that means that the entire message from the second one on would be changed. What does that mean? Let's make that simple. Let's use a triple letter code, the CAT and the HAT. And I'm going to delete the C and then my sentence would read the ATAHANUTITA AT. That means that mutation would have made garbled junk out of the rest of the genetic information. Is that correct? So that is why mutations generally are harmful, incredibly harmful. And this is not a mutation. Is this there to look cute? But what intricate design features are built into this creature really boggle the mind. And is there such a thing as a mutation that is useful? Science will tell you yes. They will quote sickle cell anemia and say, well, that's a useful one. You see, if you have the sickness sickle cell anemia and you happen to live in a malaria country, then the malaria parasite cannot get into that sickle-shaped red blood cell. And the people don't get malaria so readily where other people do. So there you go. It is positive. Oh no, it's not positive. Someone with sickle cell anemia is pretty sick. It's pretty sick. So it's not a positive mutation at all. Just happens to be so that in the case of malaria, he'll be slightly less sick than the one that has malaria, but he's still sick. So there is no real positive mutation whatsoever. Now imagine now the first little cell comes into existence just by chance. Highly improbable, the molecules? Well, they would not have come into existence by chance under the different circumstances. Even if they did, would they form life? Highly improbable. You'd have to imagine bomb little house, bomb little house, bomb little house, bomb little house, thousands of times over, and you'd really have to believe that because chance or design is your only option at that level. And then let's say fortuitously, besides all that, a cell appeared. Now you have one cell. Now, of how many cells do we consist of? Thousands. And they're all different. So now, how do you account a unicellular little creature through evolution, eventually giving rise to a multicellular organism? Well, a chap by the name of Hecco came along and said, German scientists, that's not so difficult. What happened is the following. One cell came and when it divided, that's another kettle of fish. How did it divide? But let's leave it at that. It divided and the cells stuck together. And eventually it formed the ball of cells and eventually this structure because the ball, when it moved along, how did it move along? How did it get the structures to move along? That's another kettle of fish. Let's leave that up. And let's say it developed a dent and eventually this dent was like this and eventually the dent went all the way through and then you have the basic body plan of every single living organism that is multicellular. Like we, for example, we look like this with a dent all the way through. We have a tube going all the way through, right? The one opening his way there, huh? And the other one you can imagine. So that's the basic body plan. Now, think about this. If a cell divides and it has genetic information and it sticks together, then both cells will have the same genetic information right or wrong. And if it divides again, it'll still have the same genetic information. And if it divides and makes a ball, they'll all have the same genetic information. And no matter how many times you divide it, it'll have the same genetic information. Heckle says we can see in the evolution of animals that this happened because the embryos of the various animals looked the same. Of course, they don't tell you that you really cheated in this process tremendously and was even reprimanded at the highest level because of this. And how do you account then for this amazing feat of a mutation changing cells? Now, I can assume that a mutation can change the shape of a cell into something else. Let's say that's possible, but that's not what we want. We want to develop different cells. So for example, let's take two. A muscle cell and a nerve cell. Two very different cells. Did they exist in the beginning, yes or no? Let's say fortuitously a little blob of protoplasm started to go bloop bloop bloop bloop bloop bloop in the ocean. Would they have been a muscle cell and a nerve cell, yes or no? No, that would have been some later innovation, right? So how did the muscle cell and the nerve cell get its genetic information? You see, a muscle cell must have genes which say you are a muscle cell. And a nerve cell must have genes which say you are a nerve cell. Does that make sense? Okay, but none of these existed in the beginning. But let's say that the first cell looked something like this that could account for this shape but it couldn't account for the next shape, where did that new shape come from? So what we actually need is we need a new gene which says hello, you are now a nerve cell. Does that make sense? But that's not enough. If I had a nerve cell in my body and I had a muscle cell here in my arm, what would it help me if the two never talk to each other? Would it help me? No? Would it help me if I had muscle cells and nerve cells all jumbled up in my body, yes or no? Of course not. Where do I want my nerve cells? Well, I want them in the right place. For example, it would be very useful if you want to study to have them all up here, isn't that right? And if you wanted to pick something up to do it up with a brain cell, pick it up with the brain cell would be pretty useless, so you want your muscle cells down here, right? Okay, so how do I tell the cell the genes for muscle must be switched on here and the genes for brain must be switched on over there. How do I tell my brain that or my muscle then? Well, I need a switch. I need a switch. If I have two lights, one over there and one over there and I want that one on and that one off, or that one on and that one off, how many switches must I have at the back? Two, that's right. So now I need a switch because I've got two cells, but the original cells didn't have two kinds of cells, so they didn't need the switches. So now I have a question, where does the extra gene come from? That's genotype. How did it come into existence? You have two choices, chance or design. So boom, little house. Where did the switch come from? In fact, you need two switches. Where did they come from? Boom, little house, boom, little house. That's where they came from. That's what you have to believe. There's no other choice, no other choice whatsoever. And this highly complex mechanism for switching on genes and switching off genes had to come about by chance or design. But that's not enough. You need a gene which says you look like this. You need a gene which says you look like that. That's two genes. You need a gene which says you switched on. You're switched on. That's another two genes. Those are the switches. That's not enough. You also need genes to control the physiology so that this one will function differently to that one. And you need genes controlling the embryology so that they will work together. Hello? Where do those genes come from? It's genotype. Natural selection doesn't work there until this thing actually works. Boom, little house, boom, little house, boom, little house, boom, little house for a week. You have to say that. You need one heck of a lot of faith for that. All right. We have been discussing in this previous little section of how the genes actually came into existence. They could only have come into existence by chance. And then you have this high improbability of it actually happening. Now you have another problem, and that is the problem of irreducible complexity. Something that is so complex that has to be complete before it will function has to also come about by chance. For example, a wing to fly and a feather to hold the bird up has to come into existence and actually function as a feather before it can be tested as to whether it will work or whether it won't work. Isn't that correct? So these structures, where do they come from? These are questions that are really causing Darwinism quite a headache. As you can see over here, here's a problem for you. Assume now you find a highly complicated biochemical pathway in a bird. Something very, very complicated. Let's say the Krebs cycle. For any student who has studied this, there are many, many reactions and many, many genes required to make the Krebs cycle work. And then you find the Krebs cycle in this reptile, and you find the Krebs cycle in that insect, and you find the Krebs cycle in that crab and in that worm and in that worm and in this echinoderm and in these sponges. Now you find the Krebs cycle in all of them. What does that tell you? It tells you that they must all be related and since a bird and a sponge are very, very far apart, that means that this highly complex system must have been there from the beginning. Wow. So if you take all the complex biochemical pathways that are shared by every living organism under the sun, that means they were all there from the beginning. Now we're thinking boom, New York City, boom, New York City, with all the elevators working and the doors having locks and the whole tutti with the sirens blowing the works, everything coming about by chance. You really have to have a lot of faith for that. Let's have a look at selection. Selection eliminates deviant phenotypes and normalizes the population if it's stabilizing selection. Let's look at just one form of selection. What does it do? It eliminates deviant phenotypes. We have two aeroplanes, one flies well, one does not fly well. I will select one and scrap the other. That's what you do, that's selection. Let's take that to biology. Let's look at the peppered moth because the population possess dark jeans, peppered moth, have been adapted to increasingly suit the industrial areas of England. That's the theory that they go and then they show you this model where you have a light moth on a light background and a dark moth on a light background or vice versa, a black moth on a black background and a white moth now in a black background. They say it changed because of the suit. Actually, that's a light, didn't happen like that, didn't happen like this at all. They stuck these onto dark and light backgrounds. This is not what really happened. They just suppose that this could happen. Let's run along with their theory. It's a nice theory. Let's say the area was generally black. Which moth over here would have a greater chance of survival? Obviously, the white one. No, black one. Why? Because the birds can't see it. So, the bird comes and eats the white one. What eventually happens to the white one? It disappears. What do we call that in science? Extinction. Natural selection eliminates those genotypes which cannot survive under these circumstances. All right. Let's do a little bit of mathematics. You started with how many moths? Two. Natural selection has eliminated? One. How many you got left? One. All right. Has natural selection now made more or less? Less. That's right. All right. Natural selection has taken two eliminated one and you have one left. Now, my question to you is the following. How can you use a process, natural selection, that makes less and less to make more and more? Because you start with few animals and you know you want to get lots and lots of animals on the planet. Isn't that right? How do you do that? You cannot use a mechanism that makes less and less to make more and more. So, this doesn't make any sense. In the past, there used to be a lot more variety than there is today. So, natural selection is surely doing away with things. Now, here you have the dog family and you have small dogs to large dogs and you have all these dog shapes and all these ear shapes and all these strange little creatures. Look at the ear shapes. Long, droopy ears and the bloodhound, this ear and the collar and all these hair types that we see over here, all of them present in the dog family. Question. Obviously, the ancestor, all these dogs were bred from the wolf, must have had genes for all of these appearances. Isn't that right? Must have been there. Question, where the genes come from? Two choices. Chance or design for all of that variety. Didn't come about by natural selection. Natural selection doesn't create anything. It only chooses between things that are already there. So, in the past, I would say every single one of these snails is a different species. Today we know this is one species. Under some circumstances, some sets of genes are activated. Under other circumstances, other sets of genes are activated and so this is actually one set. Some butterflies, for example, have different appearances in different seasons and some of these creatures, like this pigeon, actually must contain all the genes for what has been bred out of the wild pigeon. That means large pigeons, small pigeons, black pigeons, white pigeons, funny pigeons, all kinds of weird pigeons have been bred from the wild type. Where do all those genes come from that were there? Either they were built in by some designer or they came into existence by boom little house, boom little house, boom little house. That's what you have to believe. In terms of the probability, look at the variety here from black to white, from black to white, from small to large. It's an interesting creature known as the quaca. It's an extinct type of zebra that only had stripes up to a certain area and then the rest was stripeless and it went extinct some 300 years ago. And then they found a skin in a museum and while they were cleaning it, the taxidermis discovered, well, there are some blood vessels still stuck to the back in the dried fat and that content read blood corpuscles. So what did they do? Or blood cells in general, they sent it for DNA analysis. And when the tests came back, they were surprised because the DNA was identical to the plain zebra that lives today. Wow. And so they took the plain zebra and they started breeding in a breeding program to breed the quaca back. And they've got the quaca back. Now, is that evolution or was it just variety in the gene pool? What do you think? What was it? It was just variety in the gene pool. You have two ladybirds, the typical one with the red and the black and then there's black one. Originally, they were two species until they discovered, no, wait a second. This one appears in the fall and this one appears in spring. So obviously, there are two sets of genes in this creature and the one set of genes is activated in the fall and the other set of genes is activated in the spring. So you have two alleles over here, two possibilities. Now, two genes coding for different appearances. Where those genes come from? Chance or design? That's your only option. In all of these, it's exactly the same story. Now, let's imagine these are insects. Now, insects go through various stages. At first, there's a lava. What's a lava look like? It looks like a worm. Then there's a pupa, which looks like a little bag hanging from somewhere and then you can have a butterfly or whatever develops out of that. Wow, that means there must be complete batteries of genes coding for those totally different organisms. If you knew nothing about insects and I gave you a big fat caterpillar, wouldn't you classify it as a totally different species to a butterfly? Yes or no? Sure you would. So where do all those genes come from, that code, under one set of circumstances, caterpillar? And then what happens to those genes? Switched off. And another set of genes in the DNA are activated. Pupa. And then those are switched off. And another set is activated. And you have a butterfly. Three complete sets of genes in that organism. Each gene having to come about by chance or design because natural selection doesn't operate at that level. Wow, mind boggling. So if you want to have a mouse that you cannot see on the background, like pedagunatus californicus on a white background or on a black background, two sets of genes, each time, boom little house, rabbits that can change their colors in different seasons, boom little house, boom little house, lizards that can do the same. Any process that modifies the genotype to increase the variation. Now of course science thought about this and said, wow, we have a problem. We have a huge problem here. So if DNA cannot be controlled through natural selection, everything happens by chance. And the genes have to come about by chance. And then natural selection store comes and destroys parts of them and only keeps some, we're getting less and less. How do we get more and more? It's a problem. And then they came up with the idea. Ah, we know sexual reproduction increases the variety. Well, that's very nice. So one of the processes that can modify the genotype to increase variation is sexual reproduction. But how does it come about? It had to come about by chance. Because unless the babies are there as a result of the union, you won't have more variety. Does that make sense? Let's think about that. So, fertilization, the whole process of sexual reproduction, the whole process of meiosis, one of the most complex structural processes, independent assortment, crossing over all of these things came about by chance. Male and female came about by chance. Wow. Because unless you have a male and a female, and unless that male and the female pair, and unless that offspring is actually born, we won't have an increased variety. So how did everything come into existence up to that point? You have two options. Chance or design? Now, what does the Bible say? The Bible says that God created them, male and female. Is that correct? And everybody knows that everything comes from the females, isn't that correct? Is anybody here born from a male? Hello? Anybody here? No? The Bible says that Eve came from whom? From Adam. Now, is that scientifically logical? Shouldn't Adam have come from Eve? Yes or no? Yeah, sure. That's the only logical way to think about it. But let me tell you something. Eve could only have come from Adam. Why? Well, let me put it to you this way. As I stand here before you, ladies, whether you like it or not, I have every gene in me that it takes to make a woman. But do you have every gene that it takes to make a man? Nope. Why don't you have? You don't have a Y chromosome. But I have an X chromosome, but you don't have a Y chromosome. So you don't have every gene that takes to make a man. I always tell that to my wife and I say, so don't you forget it? She gets very upset with me. So Eve could only have come from Adam. The Bible is quite right on that score. But sexual reproduction and all the processes associated with it had to come about by chance. Here you have what happens. Here's a chromosome. Let's assume that's from dad and there's one that lines up that is identical. That's from mom. It has similar genes on it with different alleles on it. So you could have variety come into this. So we have 23 pairs of chromosomes. Half of them are from our mother and half of them are from our father. During myosis, they line up like this. This whole process that makes them do this is just rearranging my letters in a book. It doesn't create an airplane until the airplane is created. I don't know what's happening. I'm just jumbling up letters. It doesn't mean anything yet in terms of natural selection. So they come together, they divide in this complicated process and then they do something amazing. They exchange genetic information. Wow. So when I produce germ cells or my wife produces over and those two come together, then this process has already happened. So from my mother and from my father, I create a mix of genes by crossing the genes over now. Wow. That's not so easy. Now what you need is you need an enzyme that runs along the DNA. And then you need another enzyme that comes along like a pair of scissors and cuts the one. And then you need another one which sticks them together. In the meantime, you've unwinding the structure causing a knot. So you need stress reducing enzymes which release the stress, magnificent setup. And then you link them together so that they are exactly in the right place. And if you cut one nuclear tide too far, and there are millions of them, and this reaction is taking place all over in the cell, one snip, one nuclear tide too far. And the next gene reads instead of being a human, you end up a cabbage. No mistakes allowed. No mistakes allowed. Wow. And then you look like this. And all this has to be unraveled. And in order for this to happen, they have to be twists and turns and recombining. It's a highly complicated system. But all it does, it is rearranges the letters in my book. It's like taking a computer program and clipping portions out and putting them in another place. But it doesn't produce anything yet until it's built. So how did the mechanism come into existence? This highly complicated mechanism that is as complicated as what you saw in a video just now, how did it come into existence? Chance or design. That's your only possibility. So here we have some cavefish. Notice that they haven't got eyes. Oh, that's a new species, says science. That's a new species. Well, that's interesting. Here are some blind cave beetles. Here are blind crayfish, cave crayfish. Here's a blind cave salamander, and here's a blind cave cockroach. All new species. Did you know, if you go to Hawaii and a new island forms, very soon the cockroaches invade the new crevices. And then within just a few months, those within the caves don't have eyes. Evolution? I don't think so. I think what happened is, under those circumstances without light, it's not necessary for the eyes to develop. And the genes which have all these nice little switches are just switched off. So is this a new species? No, it's not a new species at all. It's just a modified species. Because we have these nice genes and these switching systems, which had to come about how? By, you have two choices. Chance or design? Okay. Birds that lose their wings. You have flightless rails, flightless pelicans, flightless cormorants, flightless this on islands. Why? Because if you're far out on an island and you go for a flight and the wind takes you away and you don't find your island soon or let you go, that's the end of you. So they develop flightlessness very quickly. Is this a mutation in all of these creatures? I don't think so. I think it's switch off, switch off, switch off, switch off, switch off. Now there's a chicken that has lost its feathers. And why hasn't it got feathers? Because this one has a mutation. Now you see the difference? This one is a mutation. Something's gone wrong and it doesn't develop figures. That's something different. But you can get all these different kinds by just switching on and switching off genes. Here's a cross between a zebra and a horse. So you can get new varieties by crossing things. Here is a cross between a leopard and a jaguar. There's a cross between a tiger and a lion, it's called a lyga. Wow, interesting animal. There is a cross between a dolphin and a whale, it's called a wolf. A cross between a horse and a zebra. It's called a z horse. And a cross between a zebra and a donkey called a zonki. Now most of these can end up infertile. But when you cross insects or plants, it doesn't necessarily mean that they're going to be infertile. So it works. Here's a cross between a sheep and a goats. But you can't do this naturally. So what they do is they take an embryo of one, take a few cells from that and a cell from the other one, link them together, put them into a surrogate mother. And then you have an animal that develops pot, goat, pot sheep, pot goat, pot sheep, pot goat, pot sheep, pot goat, pot sheep. This animal is a total catastrophe. All right. So all these switching genes and things that you have to create all these varieties are only able to come into existence by chance or design. Now here we can do something else. If you have a chromosome and you take another chromosome and you link it to it, you can get a long chromosome. We call that a fusion, a tandem fusion. Now here's an animal that has such a fusion. This is the yellow, the largest antelope in the world. Notice that it has stripes on the side and it has this twirled horn. Notice the largest antelope in the world. Here's one with a similar fusion. It has the stripes down the side. This is the kudu and it has a twirled horn. There's one with a similar one. This is the female of the kudu. There's the lesser kudu, which is a smaller variety. Same stripes. The male will also have the horns. There's an interesting animal. If you didn't know there were one species, you'd make them too. This is the female nyala with the stripes. Here's the male nyala. You can see the stripes very frankly there and the interesting twirl in the horn. There is the bongo with the stripes and the same twirl in the horn. There's the citatunga, which is a very small antelope, stripes and the horn. Now they all have this fusion. Now my question to you is this. Do you think this is one kind or is it different species? Well the world makes it all different species, but they all have the same aberration. So I would say this is just a variety of one. Let's take this a little further. Here's the wolf. The wolf has 76 chromosomes. That's more than what we have. And these are the varieties of wolves and they interbreed readily so they don't change shape too much because they interbreed so readily, the various clans. But when you come to the foxes, it's a different kettle of fish. They all look different. And what is more, some of them have 38 chromosomes and some have 78 chromosomes and everything in between. But if you take one with 38 chromosomes, the chromosomes are very long. If you take one with 78 chromosomes, the chromosomes are very short. So what they did is they checked them out and they said, "Wow, you know what? It's the same information. It's just rearranged." So my question is this. If you look at these creatures and you look at the wild dogs and the dog races today, here's an afghan and a Belgium shepherd and a papi long. There they are. We know that is one species. There's the variety. And these are the wild ones and these are all different species. But in actual fact, they actually all have the same genes just slightly differently arranged. It's not new material. It's just rearranged material. So questions of all these wild dogs and dogs and wolves and coyotes, how many do you think went on to the ark? One pair. One pair. And out of that, one pair, all of this variety came into existence. Of all those antelope I mentioned, how many needed to go on to the ark? Well, I tricked you there. Seven pairs. Why? Because they were clean animals. These are unclean animals. But again, the reduction in number that you need to take on the ark is actually quite incredible. If you take the jackal, the fox and the coyote, there are three species. Well, in your mind's eye, add the wolf. Now the coyote will breed with a wolf. Did you know that? In Canada, in central Canada, where the coyotes are very large, they will breed with a wolf. On the coast, the coyote is smaller and will not breed with a wolf. But the coyote is capable of breeding with a wolf. And the jackals would be capable of breeding with a coyote. If you go to Australia, there's the dingo, and there's a dog, and you see how very similar they are, and in fact, the dingo is going extinct. Why? Because it breeds with a dog. So question, what is a dingo? A dingo is a dog. That's right. You see, we like as scientists to split everything up into hundreds and hundreds of species when really a kind is a much bigger thing than that. All you need is one wild type, and out of that you can get all the canets, dingoes and foxes and wild dogs and all the canets out of one pair in ark. And you could get it as rapidly like that because the genes are there. For example, if you take two short chromosomes and you fuse them into a long one, that would be using the information in a different way. And so you have mice that have this. You have mice with a few chromosomes, and they are very long like this. And you have mice with short chromosomes like this, but the information put it together is exactly the same here as in those two. So the house mouse and the field mice and all of these mice have just got jumbled up information. So how many of the mice went onto the ark of all those different mice? One pair? Very interesting. Then you have differences in heterochromatin, all kinds of interesting things. We have something else that increases variety. We have genes which we call transposons, where you can take a piece of information and take that piece and translocate it onto another piece of DNA. Don't think that this is a simple thing. All this happens at the level of the gene. You have to cut this gene out, transport it to another location, make a snip, open up the DNA, put it in, close it up again, and it's got to be read in the new place. And what can happen then? In the new position, the gene might be read more, and in one generation you go from a small mouse to a giant mouse, one generation. Just go boom, and it's big. All you have done is taken the one gene and put it in another position. You can do it with a dark mouse, you can do it with a light mouse, it doesn't matter. One simple step. But if you'd taken that gene and you'd cut it one letter too far, what would have happened? Then it would have read. It has to be a precise process. So let's think about this. Built in variety in the gene pool so that we can get every kind of color that you can imagine, every hair type that you can imagine, all of these things built into that wild animal, the wolf. Where did all those genes come from? What's your choices? Chance or design? Now imagine this. Everything I'm showing you here is genome type. So it happened by chance. All those genes, boom little house, boom little house, boom little house, boom little house, all that variety by chance. Reproductive exchange. That we have a male and a female means nothing until the children are there. Boom, New York City. Now we have male and female. Came about by chance. The mechanism, the meiosis, the most complicated systems known to man. Boom. Came about by chance. The whole mechanisms to build everything came about by chance. The crossing over during meiosis whereby I can have infinite numbers of children. Did you know just from the independent assortment during meiosis, I can have 80 trillion different children. Whereas if I add crossing over, it is limitless. Will the two that are exactly identical in this whole please stand up? Why is nobody getting up? Because you are all different. Why are you all different? Because your genes have different alleles and even if they don't, they are differently expressed. That's variety in the gene pool. Recombination of chromosomes, which gives you all these wolf types and wild dogs and all these antelopes, chance or design. Transposable DNA. These DNA that can jump from one place to another, chance or design. Some animals, when they are under stress, will totally rearrange their DNA. They'll take it and jumble it up. And a whole new batch of offspring develops. For example, naked mole rats are like that. Amazing. There's one queen. She breeds. If times get tough, then she has all these different ones. And all of these mechanisms were totally unknown to Darwin. And all of them could only occur by chance or design. So now imagine that you are now equipped with this new information. And you are a new Darwin. And you come to the island and you find, instead of the finches, you find loxops. And you see all these varieties. What would you say? What would you say? Would you say, well, because there's so much variety and they all come from probably one pair, therefore, God did not create. Would you say that? You would no longer say that. You would say, wow, what a built-in variety in the gene pool. Wouldn't you say that? Absolutely. So the variety must have been built in. So then let's go to the human race. There are all the different races. And you can look at the different features. The men, of course, are far more handsome than the women, as usual. You can see that. And the different groupings. And let's stick to the children because then we stay out of controversy. And you have some very interesting differences in features. This one here is white. What is actually not white is just white. And this one here is dark. And this one over here, the eye structure is slightly different. Here as well. And this Filipino boy, that eye structure is slightly different. All the different races. Where they come from? What's the difference between them is the one superior to the other, as people would imagine? Well, if you are equipped with this information, then you will know that there is no difference between them whatsoever on the genetic level. White versus black, for example, is just the way in which the gene for melanin production is expressed. I can produce melanin. I have the gene, therefore, for melanin. If I lie in the sun, I go darker. So I produce more melanin. A black person just has a more active expression of the same gene that I have. So there's no genetic difference there. Just the controlling mechanism is activated differently. That's all. What about the difference in eye shape that we have in the eastern and the western societies? Well, it's just the way in which the fact is deposited in the eyelids that is different. It's a purely biochemical process which is activated by the same genes as we have, because I also have fat in my eyelids. So is there a difference? No, the expression is different. The eye color, how is that determined? By different batteries of alleles. So I have brown dominant, blue recessive, etc. So if you have, for example, two parents with bright blue eyes and blue is recessive, then their children will have what color eyes? Blue. If you have one parent with brown eyes and one parent with blue eyes, then what will the color of the eyes be? Can be anyone. If the brown-eyed one has only the dominant gene, then the children will have brown eyes. If he has recessive and the other one, it can be any one of them. So I was explaining to my students like this. If both your parents have brown eyes, or one of them has brown eyes, and your brothers and sisters have all kinds of eyes, that's fine. If both your parents have bright blue eyes and your brothers have brown eyes, well, then the father was probably the postman. But even then I could be wrong, even then I could be wrong, because sometimes you can have the gene and it's not expressed. Let's say you have the gene for brown and it's not expressed and it ends up being a different color. It could be blue. So what we are seeing here is a tremendous capacity for variety. Here you have drosophila moly and drosophila de gresa, and they look totally different. Notice that this one has very red eyes, this one has almost black eyes, some of them have white eyes, some of them have no eyes, some of them have long wings, some of them have short wings, some of them have no wings, some of them have one body, some of them have two bodies, but they're all fruit fliers. One more question, there's a piano. Imagine that the keys on the piano are the genes. How many tunes can I play on the piano? An infinity, an enormous number, infinity, number of tunes, is that correct? Yes, and if I had a guitar over here, how many tunes could I play on the guitar? An infinite number of tunes, and so I could go through every musical instrument, but how many guitars songs could I play on the piano? None. It remains a piano, and I can express it in various tunes, same with our DNA, so God must be a lover of variety. Does that make sense? And all the gene systems and all the varieties that we see must be an expression of that love for variety. That's your only choice, unless you want to believe that all of these structures, with all their complexity that we spoke about tonight, came about by chance. I believe you need more faith than anything else to believe that. Nobody in his right mind, if he picked up a watch, would say that came about by chance, and the processes that we saw in the cells that had to come about by chance are millions and millions of times more complex than anything man has ever devised, including everything it took to travel to outer space. Nothing comes even close to the complexity of what happens in a cell, and it came about by chance. As for me and my household, I prefer to believe in a designer, but the choice is yours. You can if you want to believe in boom, middle house. Thank you. [MUSIC] [BLANK_AUDIO]