Language of God or Happy Accident? (Part 2)
In his Return of the God Hypothesis, Cambridge educated philosopher of science Stephen C Meyer argues that ‘certain features of living systems… are best explained by the activity of an actual designing intelligence” (See Part 1). In an earlier publication (Signature in the Cell) Meyer points out that “DNA stores the assembly instructions for building the many crucial proteins and protein machines that service and maintain even the most primitive one-celled organisms.” He contends that intelligent activity rather than chance best explains the existence of this digital code, and he finds some of the most persuasive support for this claim in the research work of fellow ID theorist Douglas Axe.
Axe’s research into the structure of proteins lead him to consider the question: “How rare, or common, are the amino-acid sequences that produce the stable folds that make it possible for proteins to perform their biological functions?” (Signature). According to Meyer, Axe’s work demonstrated that “the probability of producing any properly sequenced 150-amino-acid protein at random is about 1 in 1074 In other words, a random process producing amino-acid chains of this length would stumble onto a functional protein only about once in every 1074 attempts.”
The odds get worse for the materialist. Evidently in order for the protein to fold the amino acids must be linked via a peptide bond, and the probability of this occurring is roughly 1/2. Thus, the odds against this happening 149 times by chance in a chain of 150 amino acids is roughly 1 in 1045. Worse still, in nature amino acids come in left-handed or right-handed forms but only left-handed forms produce proteins. Again, the odds against building a 150-amino-acid chain at random in which all amino acids are L-form is 1 in 1045. Adding the exponents (74+45+45) we find that “the odds of getting even one functional protein of modest length (150 amino acids) by chance from a prebiotic soup is no better than 1 chance in 10164” Meyer reminds us that “there are only 1080 protons, neutrons, and electrons in the observable universe.” (Part 3 next month)
Rex
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