Evolution is a Fact #1 - Protein Functional Redundancy

by cofty 291 Replies latest watchtower beliefs

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  cofty

  Hooby - From the OP, 'The number of possible amino acid sequences that would result in a functional Cytochrome C protein molecule has been calculated to be a billion times larger than all the atoms in the known universe'

  If you actually want to understand more about the evolution of the electron transport chain, read 'The Vital Question' by Nick Lane. It answers your question very specifically.
  

  This thread is about the differences in amino acid and nucleotide sequences in living things and how this provides evidence of common descent.
• 

  hooberus

  From the OP, 'The number of possible amino acid sequences that would result in a functional Cytochrome C protein molecule has been calculated to be a billion times larger than all the atoms in the known universe'

  Yes, but the number of possible sequences of the same length that would NOT result in a functional Cytochrome C protein molecule is trillions of times larger than this number. Yockey calculated both numbers.

  Evolutionists focus on one and ignore the other far LARGER number.

  So much larger that has any evolutionist shown that it’s likely?

  If you actually want to understand more about the evolution of the electron transport chain, read 'The Vital Question' by Nick Lane. It answers your question very specifically.

  Did he deal with the mathematical problem of obtaining a functional Cytochrome C molecule that Yockey alluded to?
  
  
  
  
• 

  cofty

  Hooby you are missing the point so egregiously I have to assume it is a deliberate distraction.

  Nobody can be that obtuse.
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  hooberus

  Cofty, you claim that the pattern of sequence variation in Cytochrome C between species is “exactly the way evolution predicts”.

  My point regarding the mathematical problem is that if purely naturalistic evolutionary processes cannot likely produce a Cytochrome C molecule, then they cannot therefore predict any pattern of Cytochrome C sequence variation.
• 

  hooberus

  Even taking the existence of Cytochrome C as a given, that evolutionary processes “predict” life’s pattern is a stretch.

  Evolutionary theory is highly flexible. Evolutionists “adapt” evolution to try to fit any data.

  If Cytochrome C sequences (beyond a limited number of shared amino acids required to form the protein) were totally random between species, then Evolutionists would ‘explain’ the random pattern as a result of ‘neutral mutation’. After all they believe that ‘random’ mutation is the source of genetic variation. (They would tell us that a creator would not have done it this way and that it is evidence of random naturalistic processes instead).
• 

  cofty

  Hooby let's look at the options.

  Remember first that there are lots of ways to make a working Cytochrome C molecule AND you can take any one from any species, transplant it to any other species and it works perfectly. This is due to 'protein functional redundancy'. The important thing about the molecule is its physical shape and there are trillions of trillions of way to join amino acids together so that they fold up into that shape.

  Option 1 - God created every species with an identical cytochrome C amino-acid sequence.

  Option 2 - God created every species with its own unique cytochrome C amino-acid sequence.

  Option 3 - Every species evolved from a common ancestor.

  Imagine we now compare a human, chimpanzee and yeast cytochrome C amino-acid and nucleotide sequences.

  What would we expect to find in each of the three scenarios?

  What do we actually find?

  I'm heading out for the day but I will check your homework tonight. No TV until its finished!
• 

  cofty

  11 hours Hooby! You been playing XBox instead of doing your homework?

  Okay I will do it for you, maybe it was too difficult.

  ---

  What would we expect to find in each of the three scenarios?
  

  Option 1 - God created every species with an identical cytochrome C amino-acid sequence.

  Since every one of the trillions of possible cytochrome C molecules works exactly the same this would probably be the scenario we would most expect to find. If this was the case, then when we compared the protein in modern species we would find that they are all identical.

  If we assume young-earth creation then we would expect to see no differences at all, not even at the level of nucleotides. Over a longer time-scale, any mutations that did appear would result in a random pattern of differences between species. It would be just as likely that humans and yeast would share identical sequences with chimps being different from both.

  Option 2 - God created every species with its own unique cytochrome C amino-acid sequence.

  Every species would still show distinct DNA sequences but there would be no discernible pattern that would enable us to set out any relationships between species.

  Option 3 - Every species evolved from a common ancestor.

  In this case a very clear pattern should emerge. First we arrange extant species into a huge family tree based on fossil evidence, comparative anatomy, bio-geography and other lines of evidence. Then we study the sequences of DNA and amino-acids in representative samples of cytochrome C molecules. We would find that the genetic evidence EXACTLY corresponds with and confirms the 'tree-of-life'. Sequences of chimps and humans ought to be more-or-less identical but different from more distant mammals, more different from birds, amphibians and fish and very different from vegetables and yeast.

  What do we actually find?

  Go on have a guess.

  If we had no other evidence for the common ancestry of every living thing this one line of evidence would be sufficient to make it a certainty.
  
  
• 

  hooberus

  I will take more than one post to respond to the above 2 posts. I won’t consider responding to anything “new” until I’m done.

  General:

  The style of argumentation is similar to what other evolutionists use (see ReMine 1993) and can be broken down to two basic assertions of evolutionists.

  1. The assertion by evolutionists that a creator would not have created life the way that it exists.

  2. The assertion by evolutionists that evolution makes specific predictions about life, and that these predictions are fulfilled.

  The assertion by evolutionists that a creator would not have created life the way that it exists, is a convienent assertion. Cofty’s argument assumes that a creator could not (or at least would not) have created Cytochrome C in the pattern that it exists in. (Instead, according to him a creator would have been limited to creating it totally identically or totally random.)

  Thats several assertions about a creator with little or no substantiation.

  We are told by evolutionists that “just because we can’t imagine out how evolution did it doesn’t mean that a creator did it” - Perhaps evolutionists should consider that “just because we can’t imagine why a creator would do something in a certain way doesn’t mean that evolution did it”
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  hooberus

  In 1985 an Australian molecular biologist wrote a book titled “Evolution A Theory In Crisis”. This book gives a well laid out explanation of life’s overall pattern of “groups within groups” (a pattern of theme and variation) according to shared characteristics. This is found in chapters 5 and 6.

  He points out the difficulties of the specific evolutionary scenario of descent with modification from common ancestry of explaining life’s pattern.

  He also documents in a later chapter how the pattern of Cytochrome C matches the predictions of the pre-Darwinian typological model of nature almost perfectly (of groups within groups with each group Isolated and equidistant when compared with other groups).

  So regardless of evolution the predictions match another model almost precisely. So why could a creator have not done this? Especially since he would have already have created according to the same model?
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  2+2=5

  We are told by evolutionists that “just because we can’t imagine out how evolution did it doesn’t mean that a creator did it” - Perhaps evolutionists should consider that “just because we can’t imagine why a creator would do something in a certain way doesn’t mean that evolution did it”
  

  What dribble.

  You talk about “Evolutionists” like it’s a 20th century religion.