Thought Snack: Darwinism's Failure
“In recent years, biologists have been discovering a new form of information critical to body formation called epigenetic information, which is not stored in DNA but in cell structures. Epigenetic information is that ‘imparted by the form and structure of embryonic cells, including information from both the unfertilized and fertilized egg.’ In other words, the physical structure of cells early in the process of making new life-forms charts a developmental path for the organism.
In chapter 14 of Darwin’s Doubt, Meyer describes several kinds of this epigenetic information that developmental biologists have identified. The details are beyond the scope of this book, but Meyer notes that building life requires:
DNA to make proteins
Proteins to be organized into cell structures and cell types
Cell types to be organized into tissues
Tissues to be organized into organs
Organs and tissues to be organized into body plans
While DNA contributes to each of these five basic steps, epigenetic information is necessary to produce the higher-level biological structures of steps 2-5. DNA can’t do it alone… But can’t epigenetic information be mutated in some way to create new life-forms? Meyer says he gets that question repeatedly in his public talks. His answer is always ‘no’ for several reasons, the foremost being that any significant changes in cell or organ structure would kill the organism immediately. Of course, death would be the end of any evolutionary process.
This fact should also be the end of anyone claiming that Darwinism is true. Since DNA alone does not entirely control body-plan formation, mutating DNA alone will never generate a new body plan.
Take infinite time—it will never happen.”
– Excerpt from Stealing from God: Why Atheists Need God to Make Their Case by Frank Turek
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