21.21

The Q & A session should start shortly.

21.29

Stephen Meyer - the disagreement is not principally about facts. Jonathan Wells enjoyed Westrop’s lecture. Meyer explains that there are different ways to measure the duration of the Cambrian Explosion. The DI used a figure from aprox. 5-10 mil years, whereas Westrop used aprox. 20-25 mil. But the difference between the numbers doesn’t affect the major points that DD was making.

The relevant time is the difference between the presumed common ancestors and the appearance of the new forms.
They are not disputing the numbers put forth by Dr. Westrop.

There are two different perspectives on the same basic facts.

21.32

Q: Are you aware that the interviews of Morris and Valentine were done 9 and 10 years ago? Are you aware that Valentine recently denied the conclusions reached in the movie?

A: I don’t accept the premise of the question. We’re concerned with the argument. Neither were presently as ID proponents. It is appropriate that they differentiate themselves.

21.38

Q: I’m concerned that your presentation did not include the presence of virus in changing DNA - a DNA transcription of a retrovirus became transcribed on early mammals. It transformed and changed and become functional, this lead to the placenta. Why would you not include the influence of viruses? It is estimated that over 50% of human DNA is retroviral DNA based.

A: We do not deny that possible retrovirus have been transcribe. I think it is entirely unjustified that this lead to the placenta. The arguments presented in the movie would precede this, nonetheless.

How do you build the new proteins, new protein folds and higher body structure, I don’t think viruses can account for that.

21.45

Q: Top-down v. Bottom-up. It ignores all of the facts, showing unity in life - DNA is universal. You (Meyer) repeatedly ask where the info comes from. The film ignores the fact that these ignores that there are approx. 500 shared genes. How do you account for this if they were independent creation events?

A: When you do sequence comparisons…

Please answer my question!

[...]

Because of what we now know about the ontogenetic info, we see that the genes are low-level. Commonalities can be expected.

Without housekeeping genes, you need them to be alive. So, without them you aren’t here.

HOX genes, if mutated can be very dramatic. HOX genes kick in long after the body plan is established. All they do (in a fruit-fly) is tell whether or not to put an eye here - it is a switch. HOX genes do not account for info. If I photocopy paper, that does not add to info.

21.47

Q: Don’t you think it would have been better to have some modern darwinian proponents.

A: I think it would have been better. On the other hand, why should the private filmmakers pay for that in the movie, when campuses provide it at screenings such as this for free?

21.50

Q: THe film referenced ‘designers’; is there confusion there? Is it one or many?

A: The method employed is ironically darwinian - if t=you are trying to explain an event in the distant past, look for known causes now in operation that causes such things. Using this we arrive at intelligence; single or multiple designers could explain this.

21.51

Q: The movie talked against YEC, is that intentional?

A: Both Jonathan and I hold to the antiquity of the earth.

21.53

Q: The adaptive immune systems are essentially the same in all vertebrates, going back to sharks. I think it is a perfect example of something outside of the fossil record that you could have used.

21.58

Q; It seems like there is a fundamental distinction between when these organisms appear in the record and when they arise. There is an abundance of evidence to suggest that these body types arose before this.

A: We disagree. Valentine says otherwise. There is a dispute here. The only molecular evidence that we have is from modern organisms. It is speculation at best.

The vast majority of the phyla arise in the CE.

http://www.discovery.org/csc/

22.04

The Q & A session is over - Meyer and Wells are sticking around to answer more questions.

19.35

The doors are open and people are starting to wander into the auditorium and find seats.

20.07

It is beginning - Josh Malone, president of IDEA Club is making introductions. He also announced that the southwestern premier of “Darwin’s Dilemma” will be shown tomorrow night at the SNOMNH 7 pm. 100 of the 170 seats will be reserved via tickets, which can be picked up tomorrow, starting at 11 am in the Scholar’s Room, on the 3rd floor of the union.

20.11

Dr. Steven Meyer -noting that this year is Darwin’s 200th birthday and some of the events associated with it. Asks, what is Darwin’s legacy? The central legacy of Darwin is that he refuted the classical argument for design in biology. “Darwin gave us ‘design’ without a designer.”

“Biology is the study of the complicated things that give the appearance of having been designed for a purpose.” Richard Dawkins, The Blind Watchmaker

20.16

The Tree of Life?

Meyer says he is going to look at the base of the tree; discussing the origin of life. Darwin did not address the origins of the first life.

Protoplasma theory of life:
“The cell is a simple homogenous globule of plasm.” - T.H. Huxley

Cells were thought to be produced from simple chemical reactions.

20.19

Sequence Hypothesis - Crick

Meyers is explaining basic DNA info.

Proteins: the toolbox of the cell. They have very specific 3d structures to perform specific functions in the cell.

20.21

I apparently am not the only one live blogging this. ERV, who is hostile to ID, is also here, blogging.

20.24

1 Specific shapes perform functions
2 Folded chains form specific shapes
3 Precise Amino Acid Sequencing Determines Folding (And Function)

Proteins depend on sequence specificity. (The sequence of the whole depend on the specific arrangements of the parts).

20.26

DNA is a repository of info for building proteins.

An animation is being shown of a sequence being formed to form a protein.

20.33

The mystery and dilemma Meyer is presenting is the origin of information found in DNA.

Shannon info:
Shannon equated information with the reduction of uncertainty. He coupled this with probability. Info-carrying capacity.
I = -log₂p

20.35

The info Meyer is describing is complex, specified, and functional.

20.39

Materialistic explanations offered:
Chance & Necessity by Jaques Monod

20.41

ERV thinks Meyer is talking over the audience, but I highly doubt it, he is explaining what he means by the terms he is using… he is even using scrabble letters to make his point.

20.45

Blind chance has little causal efficacy.

“Blind chance…is very limited…”
-A.G. Cairns-Smith

20.51

Natural Selection works in a pre-biotic state?

Differential reproduction requires life.
NS requires self-replicating organisms.

Pre-biotic NS is begging the question.

20.54

Meyer is addressing Dawkins’ “Methinks it is like a weasel” proposition. Rather than looking for functional info, the program checks for proximity to the target info.

20.57

“Biochemical Predestination” - Dean Kenyon rethinking his position mentioned.

21.00

No bonds between the bases in DNA that could account for the sequential arrangement of the bases.

Visual aid: Magnet letters on a metal board. The letters are attracted to the board, but that attraction cannot account for their sequence.

Forces of attraction cannot account for info.

21.03

Self-organizational mechanisms exist, but produce symmetrical, repetitive patterns, rather than information.

21.06

Darwin / Lyell - method of multiple competing hypothesis.

Explaining an event in the remote past - inference to the best explaination.

21.09

Henry Quastler

“The creation of new information is habitually association with conscious activity.”

21.14

ID does not qualify as science:

1 - We are more interested in what the actual causal explanation is.

2 - If the best causal explanation is eliminated from being ’science’, perhaps the definition of science should be amended.

21.17

Q & A Session Begins

21.23

Q: Falsification: is ID falsifyable?

A: Historians of Science are suspicious of Popper’s theory of falsification. A more relevant standard is the preponderance of evidence and explanatory power. ID explains key systems bettor than competitors - it is testable in this way. ID does make discriminatory predictions - Junk DNA is an example of this. The non-coding regions of the genome were predicted to be functional. In ‘08, four books argued against ID on the basis of junk DNA.

21.24

Objection! There is Junk DNA!!

Meyer disagrees. Meyer says it is current and that they have a factual disagreement.

21.30

Q: How complex an organism is needed in order to reproduce? (Virus proposed)

A: The transitions from a self-replicating molecule to protein is inhibitively impossible. A protein only provides an advantage after producing a function.

21.36

Q: Great advancements have accurred -< Miller-Urey >- could this explain it in the future?

A: The problem is not the creation of amino acids, but the sequencing. The Miller-Urey experiment presupposed what gases existed in the pre-biotic environment. Experimenters have isolated products to prevent cross-reactions. This displays and points to the need for intelligence.

Pre-biotic NS begs the question.
Self-organizational experiments misunderstand the nature of info.

21.43

Q: Tree of Life: As we begin to discover the functions of junk DNA, do you think will find that the differences between structures in organisms - such as apes and humans?

A: Recommends Sternberg. The 98% of similarity between chimps and humans in DNA is found primarily in the coding regions, rather than the non-coding regions. If the non-coding regions serve a similar purpose as an OS, then it makes sense that the coding regions might have similarities.

21.47

Q: The scrabble example is overestimating the probabilities.

A: Recomends Doug Axe’s work. The amount of information isn’t governed by the number of letters in the alphabet. The plausibility of chance needs to account for the number of combinations attempted. The probabilistic resources are lacking to produce even a modest protein.

21.54

Q: If ID makes no claims concerning the nature of the designing, how can it make predictions?

A: We’re not in a position in which we can say nothing about the intelligence. It has created a code - inferences are made about the designer from the design we see. Predictions and expectations can be made, even if tentative. Reverse engineering is an example of this.

21.54

Dr. Meyer is going to stick around and talk - but his lecture is over.