[Music]
what are some of the major things other
than design and morality
that the general theory of evolution
cannot account for
well i think that it
its explanatory mechanisms are
heretofore inadequate
random mutation and natural selection
operate so slowly that
it doesn't seem that this much
biological complexity could have evolved
on earth
in some 4.8 billion years
indeed john barrow and frank tipler in
their book the anthropic cosmological
principle
list 10 steps in the course of human
evolution
like the origin of photosynthesis the
origin of inner skeleton the origin of
mitochondria 10 steps
in the course of human evolution each of
which
is so improbable that before it would
have occurred
or evolved the sun would have ceased to
be a main sequence
star it would have gone through the
entire course of stellar evolution
and incinerated the earth so the
explanatory mechanisms of
current evolutionary biology seem to be
inadequate to account for the biological
complexity
we see given the available time
bill let me ask you a question about
that too i know you're investigating
this whole
um adam jericho adam question
right now um we were mutually you
actually spoke at an event at
ets uh and i happened to be in the room
and asked a question regarding theistic
evolution and my question was this and
i'd love to have uh you answer this as
well my question to the
theistic evolutionists was what uh
evidence do you see for theistic or just
for macroevolution of any kind
that could not equally be interpreted as
evidence for a common designer or common
creator
how would you answer that question i
would say that the best evidence that
the
theistic evolutionists could offer would
be
features in the genome or the body plan
of an organism
which seemed to be non-functional
[Music]
and seemed to be evolved from
a common ancestor in which those genes
were functional so let me give one of
the examples that michael b
he gives olfactory
genes that we in chimpanzees both have
a sense of smell are called pseudogenes
they're broken they don't work anymore
and yet
ancients have them why well the best
explanation seems to be that we got them
from
our last common ancestor who had these
and that therefore we both share these
kind of genes even though they don't do
any good at all
in our genome um
to deny this the creationist would have
to say well god has chosen to design
independently two organisms chimps and
humans
both with these broken parts in them
that serve no good
it would be like saying that ford and gm
both designed independently a car with
the same broken
door handle work
so i find that to be the most persuasive
argument
for thinking that the thesis of common
ancestry
um is at least in part true
but then you need a mechanism to give
you common ancestry and therein lies the
problem
yeah right the question would be is
random mutation
and natural collection enough to
generate these biologically complex
organisms from
these common ancestors so there are two
separate issues here
frankly to be kept distinct one is one
thesis of common ancestry do we in fact
have common ancestry with other animals
and the least objectionable pieces of
theistic evolution people like michael
beahy are quite ready to accept
the other question is
are the explanatory mechanisms
posited by evolutionary theory like
random mutation and natural selection
adequate
to explain the evolution of biological
complexity
and that i think is a much more
difficult issue
yes and i remember stephen meyer
answering the question because he was on
the panel too
after one gentleman of the theistic
evolution sort gave the
sort of answer you gave stephen said
well we've been investigating some of
those broken genes and we've discovered
we don't think they're really broken so
obviously you'd have to do that on a
case-by-case basis who knows what the
right answer is but
this seems to change every 10 minutes it
seems yes
then and you're exactly like this is
what would need to be
investigated for example the misnomer of
junk
dna now exactly
non-coding regions of the genome is
vital in regulatory
uh functions so um you're right one
mustn't jump to conclusions
you