So we recently finished up looking out in space for an intelligent designer. Now it’s time to look in the microscope to the cell to see if there is an intelligent designer. This lesson was tough to follow, so I hope my notes make sense to you.

The Debate About Design In Biology.

  1. Intelligent Design- Things look designed because they are designed.
  2. Darwinism – Things look designed, but they are not designed = very unlikely a God. Darwin created this ‘Tree of Life’ to try and explain how we got to where we are today with animals and humans. But this doesn’t explain the first cell that started it all.

2 Parts of Evolutionary Theory

  1. Biological Evolution – explains how you get from simple pre-existing forms of life to more complex forms of life. Darwin created this “Tree of Life” diagram.
  2. Chemical Evolution – explains how you get the first cell. This brings the question, “Is there any appearance of design in that first cell?”

Back in the day, scientists thought the cell what something real simple, like Jello. Then as they looked more closely at a cell, they realized that it was a bit more complex. Stanely Miller did an experiment in 1953 to try and re-create the cell.

It was then that they realized that this protein that creates cells is VERY complex. It’s like a toolbox. A protein has about 100 different jobs. Those jobs depend on it’s shape…and it’s a complex 3D shape & structure. There is this sequence specificity (the function of the whole depends on the arrangement of the parts.) It’s just like the alphabet. You arrange the letters in the right way and it makes a sentence that can be read and understood. These amino acids get arranged in the right way to get protein.

3 Features of Proteins

  1. Shapes perform functions
  2. Folded chains form the shapes
  3. Precise amino acid sequencing determines folding and function.

Now we need to get to DNA. DNA tells amino acids it sequencing. Information in DNA directs the synthesis of proteins in the cell. Now we need to ask, “Who put the information in the DNA?” This information is not just complex, it’s specified & complex.