Different in degree or kind: Egnor's take (Introduction)

by dhw, Tuesday, October 25, 2016, 12:20 (2733 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: Note these are man-made modifications of bacterial defense enzymes. What is always striking to me is that bacteria in evolving these huge molecules had to invent them. Enzymes are giant in size and have loci which will grab both sides of a reaction, hold the molecules together and force a reaction that would otherwise take years to occur. Chance logically cannot create this. Saltation is logical. [My bold]

dhw: We have agreed a hundred times that we do not accept chance or Darwin’s gradualism, and we do accept saltation, which means a leap but does not necessarily preclude chance. However, my focus was on your excellent observation that bacteria had to INVENT the huge molecules – a hypothesis which seems more likely to me than your God intervening or preprogramming the huge molecules, along with everything else bacteria come up with.

DAVID: You are having bacteria work out the giant jigsaw puzzle of putting together huge organic molecules using thousands of amino acids, with the correct sequences, proper folds required for function, key-lock positions in the right spots, the necessary traces of metals of different kinds, when all the pieces are not given in a box, and even the pieces have to be made! I do not think you have any concept of the biochemistry of enzymes, the engines that make life run in the instant. Every different bio molecular reaction requires a distinct enzyme. My inference is that bacteria cannot invent at this level of complexity.

My mistake. When you wrote “What is always striking to me is that bacteria in evolving these huge molecules had to invent them,” I was celebrating, because when you said bacteria had to invent them, I thought you meant that bacteria had to invent them.