Our initial podcasts offering “evidence” or “witnesses” focus on the arguments for “intelligent design,” namely, that when you find a watch in the forest, somewhere there must be a watchmaker. Watches do not assemble themselves, and as two of our guests, Dr. John West and Dr. Ann Gauger, explain, even life at its simplest is infinitely more complex than a watch.
Our guests from the Discovery Institute in Seattle construct an increasingly compelling case that things as complex as an animal–vertebrate, invertebrate, complex or simple–cannot simply arise from itself alone through the process of natural selection. Complexity cannot arise from simplicity. Perpetual motion machines are impossible in physics–the science of biology is just as strict.
In this last segment, cellular biologist Dr. Ann Gauger explores the wonderful work accomplished by a tiny machine inside of our cells called kinesin. Kinesin has an odd shape — two long legs, two feet, and a stalk-like body — that is eminently suited for its work. When it receives a package to carry, it attaches itself to one of the many microtubule highways of the cell and begins to stride, one foot over the other, dragging its cargo behind it and looking for all the world like a little stick man walking down a road with a great big bundle on his back. Kinesin is the UPS delivery man of the cell — a molecular motor that can muscle its way through the jostling tangle of the cytoplasm, dragging its cargo with it. Because of its amazing tenacity kinesin is rarely dislodged, placing one foot securely after the other; by working in teams it is able to transport cellular objects as large as mitochondria. When it encounters an obstacle it can’t get around, kinesin will first recruit more kinesin motors to help. Failing that, it partners with another motor traveling in the opposite direction. They rock back and forth taking turns pulling in opposite directions, like a driver caught in a snow drift, until finally they dislodge their cargo. Then the original kinesin resumes travel in its old direction.
How do the proteins and organelles get from where they are made to where they are used? And how do things that need to be recycled return to the cell body? It’s by means of kinesin (for outward bound travel) and another motor protein called dynein (for inward bound travel). Remarkably, dynein and kinesin cooperate, rather than compete—otherwise there would be a constant tug of war in the cell. They “know” where packages are meant to go, and which motor protein should do the job. How does kinesin know which package to carry and what road to take? Apparently there are labels that kinesin recognizes, saying “Carry me!” but no one knows what the map is or how kinesin reads it.
The big question is, could such a tiny little intra-cellular UPS man like kinesin create itself? Could the chaos of the natural world accidentally create such a thing with such abilities? The rational answer is NO. And the only possible explanation, that there was an Intelligent Designer with remarkable capabilities.
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