 Tonight we are debating intelligent design versus evolution and we are starting right now No to have you here for another epic debate If it's your first time here consider hitting that subscribe button as we have many more debates here at modern-day debate yet to come Many juicy controversial debates for example at the bottom right of your screen want to let you know if you have not heard about this You guys we are pumped. We will have the debate is Christianity Dangerous with Dr. Michael Shermer and Mike Jones from inspiring philosophy That's on January 8th. 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You can hear from them more from them after this debate as they're all linked in the description and Want to let you know We're going to have a tag team debate where each side is going to have about 15 minutes for their opening Then we're gonna have open conversation and then Q&A for about 30 minutes at the end So if you happen to have a question feel free to fire it into the old live chat if you tag me with at modern day Debate makes it easier for me to get any question in that Q&A list and then super chat of course is also an option They'll bump your question at the top of the list and also give you an opportunity to make a comment toward one of the speakers Or an objection that they of course would get a chance to respond to now What I'm going to do is give a quick hello as we're thrilled to have our guests with us This is going to be a lot of fun So we're going to go from left to right as you see on your screen there folks first We're going to say welcome back Erica who is co-moderating with us last night. That was a fun one And so glad to have you back Erica. What can people expect to find it your link and thanks so much for being here? Hey, it's I'm always happy to be on modern day debate whether I'm debating or modding You know, I love the channel love to help out when I can but it's been a while since I've gotten to come On in debate, so I'm super psyched to be here for that And I'm very glad that everyone is being patient with my horrible lighting because like I'm at my parents house And I've got like this ancient lamp, you know casting shadows upon me as if I'm some kind of like a Stephen King monster But you can check out my channel at a gutsy-gibbon. I generally cover paleontology primatology Zoology human evolution things like that. My background is I have a BSA in animal science pre-professionals So veterinary stuff was my my plan to be so a lot of you know bio They're picked up a minor in biology as well as a minor in anthropology and I'm currently finishing up my thesis For a master of research in primatology. So that's that's kind of my background for those of you out there who I don't know Maybe you're curious. Maybe not but that's that's my deal. Thanks so much thrilled to have you and also thrilled to have you back Dr. Seigart. It's been a while. We're glad to have you here. Should be a blast. What can people accept? Expect to find it your link The first thing you'll see if you click on my website is my book the works of his hands Scientist journey from atheism to faith which was published last year 2019 and Is still available and doing pretty well Also, you can find links to my blog my YouTube channel, which is called faithful science spell s y e n c and And my new podcast channel. So everything is on one website Yeah, I haven't been on modern-day debate for a year and a half and I stopped debating for a while anywhere And I'm glad to be back. Thank you. Thank you, and we will kick it over to Maddox glad to have you back John what can people expect to find at your link? So awesome to be here yet again James always trying to drag me to be said Debates because he knows that I so much enjoy having mental combat So my channel is logical plausible probable where Try to showcase things that are just that logical plausible improbable specifically regarding Our existence what's required for it and from a macro view what it means from a big picture and More comprehensive perspective of what's required for our very existence is great looking forward to you This debates and hopefully we can provide some entertainment for the audience And it's pretty entertaining looking at how all of the atheists right now are triggered already and the debate hasn't even started yet It's like I only imagine what's gonna be like once we get into open discussion But that's about me. Let's kick it over to the one and only othangelo. It was even more hated on YouTube than I Thrilled to have you othangelo Yeah, it's a it's a pleasure. It's fun to be again at your channel James and For who doesn't know me I have a virtual library. It's called reason and science that Catsports.com where I collect information about intelligent design. I have a YouTube channel Intelligent Design Academy, which is also about intelligent design and Another YouTube channel, which is the God talk, which is more about having conversations with people of all Swords with atheists to believers and so forth Thank you very much othangelo and so very excited to get the ball rolling tonight as we were going to have the ID side kick it off with their opening which will be 15 minutes split between John and othangelo with othangelo starting first Othangelo the floor is all yours Okay Can can everyone see the screen can I start? Yes, okay One of the things that most distinguishes us from primates is the ability to speak Noam Komsky the most influential linguist of the last 50 years Wrote that language evolution and the brain mechanisms underlying it appeared to be beyond serious inquiry at the moment and the science paper from 2018 said the molecular mechanisms underlying hominine brain evolution Predating modern humans remain to be elucidated Humans have a unique anatomy that supports our ability to produce complex language human speech and communication depends on an Independent integrated very complex system where at least nine parts and organ systems play an essential role One consciousness and memory to a language Three the entire system and mechanic mechanics of human voice production and control For the lungs, which are the source of acoustic energy for speech production Five the nervous system which links the various systems to the brain six the brain for several functions Seven the ability to the expression of emotions through the face and body gesticulation eight Audition through ears to receive the sounds nine Muscle actions precisely coordinated by the brain and the four processes used to create speech are breathing phonation Resonance and articulation one The idea that matter somehow by evolutionary processes can become conscious is absurd Hard objects are never observed spontaneously to transform themselves into abstract ideas two Some of our mental abilities and emotional traits are certainly shared to some degree by other species But language is without any homologue in any other species Language evolution would have to start with simple grunts and gestures and Progressing to more and more complex communication systems until reaching human language and again No plausible hypothetical evolutionary series has ever been proposed thus Evidence is consistent with a saltational origin None of the evolutionary just so stories come anywhere close to explaining how man might have acquired the astonishing ability to craft unlimited propositions and concepts and Using a system of grammar and abstract words that are nonexistent in the animal kingdom Three the mechanism for generating the human voice is an interdependent integrated system Natural selection would not select for components of a complex system That would be useful only in the completion of that much larger system Four the lungs serve us the bellows providing the source of acoustic energy for speech production Five the nervous system links the brain to the mouth face muscles ears lungs and the vibratory and resonating system At least seven nervous systems are employed six Following regions in the brain work together as a network to process words and word sequences to determine context and meaning speech demands Extraordinarily fine and rapid motor control elaborate movements of the larynx mouth face tongue and breath must be synchronized with cognitive activity Broca's area contributes to verbal fluency language production and the semantic aspects of language The next area has three sub areas one response to spoken words and other sounds the second two words spoken by someone else the third with producing speech The temporal pole is involved in high-level semantic representation and social emotional processing The supramarginal gyros is involved in phonological and articulatory processing of words The angular gyros is more involved in semantic processing The auditory cortex lets us recognize sounds and essential prerequisite for understanding language The posterior terminal portion of the superior temporal sulcus provides access to meaning And the triangular and orbital portions of the inferior frontal gyros also play a role in semantic processing Lastly a number of researchers now reject classic localist models of language Instead, they conceptualize language and cognitive functions in general as being distributed across separate areas that process information in parallel Rather than serially from one language area to another 7 Signs lists 27 different kinds of expressions of feelings and emotions Intelligence, feelings, emotions Intelligence, feelings, emotions are intertwined and connected with the human body which responds to the way we think, feel, and act 8 Muscle actions in the head, neck, chest, and abdomen are precisely coordinated by the brain 9 Ears are necessary to hear and to receive information These nine points constitute an irreducible, interdependent, integrated complex system How could it have evolved in a long evolutionary process? The brains of chimpanzees differ considerably from those of humans Let's have a look at some numbers The size of the hominid brain increased from about 450 milliliters at 3.5 million years ago supposedly to our current average volume of 1350 milliliters And the number of cells in the human brain about 100 billion neurons Brain size increases as a function of cell numbers Such that an 11 times larger brain is built with 10 times more neurons Now let's make a calculation The human brain has about 100 billion neurons The hominid brain of our ur ancestor 3.5 million years ago had a brain the size of about 33 billion neurons That means there was an increase of 67 billion neurons in 3.5 million years Chimps start breeding at about 10 years of age That means that there would have been 350,000 generations in 3.5 million years That means there would have had to be an increase of 200,000 neurons in each generation So how could evolutionary mechanisms produce the 200,000 new neurons per generation? The task would be to specify each new cell precisely through a master program which coordinates, instructs, and defines each neuron There are sensory neurons, motor neurons, interneurons, and many other different neurons But science does not know how many exactly And our mutation rates are extremely low in humans about 60 genome-wide per generation So my end question Could 60 genetic mutations have produced 200,000 new neurons besides the macromorphological change of the entire organism per generation average during 350,000 generations And with that I end my end presentation Maddox is loading up his presentation folks James, are you on mute? Oh, go ahead Yeah, it looks like you might be James, can you hear us? Okay, sorry about that The two mute buttons, but the floor is all yours, John All right, so you're in a second James, I'm gonna need to share my screen But before I do that, you know, a lot of the things that always get brought up in these Debates of, you know, oh, there's enough time, could it happen? Do we see examples of these things? And, you know, a lot of very standard talking points get spewed And don't actually look at the underlying requirements for Things like Tangela just described actually become feasible And, you know, one of the reasons I really decided to do this debate Was the opportunity to have a discussion with a biochemist like Dr. Gart And, you know, really dive into the actual reality of what has to be taking place in order For the supposedly novel functions that have just occurred and have resulted in these Magnificently complex engineering systems that are not just the results of random chemical Reactions they're extraordinarily controlled and throughout the course of this debate I really want to dive into, you know, what is actually observed in the lab And what we're actually would have to be executed by a biochemist In order to accomplish some of these new novel functions Because ironically it's exactly what we're doing in labs across the world right now We're attempting to create new novel proteins, polypeptide chains, etc, etc To create new novel functions or to hybridize existing functions into, you know, one organism And the complexity of that and the plausibility of that occurring I'm very interested to find out if that's actually something that Is a PhD biochemist who thinks is remotely plausible to occur Even though humans and intelligent agents are able to make it occur If he actually thinks it would happen in any other context But before we get into open discussion to get in this more detail James want to go ahead and share my screen here I'm just going to try and put this into context Are you guys seeing my screen? Okay, so here we've got a English to binary converter And something that I discussed in great detail in many debates And have gone into great detail on is, you know, the genetic code The importance of it, the variety of the codes The different things that have to be executed As things we all know are very real world scenarios We've got single point mutations We've got frame shifts We've got all sorts of real problems that come into play In terms of disease and extinction And then obviously in the context of supposed new functions Coming into the equation and evolution We have to get down into the real nitty gritty Of what is actually being argued to be taking place So let's look at this So we got hello world This is me showing atheists the obvious Okay, so that's on one side on the other side We've got binary So let's look at some basics Let's just just remove a space here Oh man, now we've got a Chinese symbol Let's undo that and now we're back to hello world Let's delete a couple of these code sequences In binary Oh now we've got a major change Now something I'll talk to Dr. Gard about later Is on the fidelity rate that's required for transcription And ongoing survival That alone the premise of evolution But let's jump over to another screen Okay, how difficult can this possibly be to comprehend So I'm using about 21 letters of the 26 in the English language Obviously we've got trying to match it up to amino acids In terms of what we have to account for So while I'm using very similar letters between the two Obviously you should be able to perceive Jumping back and forth that there's a significantly different Sequence of code Even though we're using the exact same or very similar letters Now let's think about this in the context of Making this more complicated We've combined that to how low world how this is me being showing atheists the obvious How difficult can it possibly be to comprehend this Now we're getting to something that's way more complicated Now let's think about this when you have to look at codons Are being what's required similar to these chunks of A unicode that's being leveraged here You're having to get the proper sequences because let's change these zero these ones to zeros Oh, now we're gonna know let's go. Let's leave one. Oh, and I've got an eighth I mean you start to look at the different variations You don't have to change very much heads up. You've got about a minute to a minute and a half left. All right Then we start getting all sorts of changes that start kicking in and very very rapidly You have the visualization of what we're talking about in terms of mutations point mutations frame shifts And what is actually having to occur in order for new information to be expanded now in the context of what we're viewing here Yes, we're seeing words, but In the world of proteins and again, dr. Garth can't count to me on this But this is exactly what we're looking at in the spelling of proteins and the translation of Gene sequences that being done by the ribosome and all these different things. This is what's happening in the real world now The letters may be different the end They might not be words, but we are looking at overall functions and different of the sequences that equal the functional outcome of The protein and that's what you're talking about the combination of multiple polypeptides And obviously as again, dr. Garth can talk to us much more detail, but I mean, this is a very short sentence we're talking about things that are thousands and thousands long and the Level of fidelity that must be in place Is extraordinarily high or you have failure and you actually have termination of the protein synthesis so I just want to put this all into context and wrap it up now, but You know, we I've talked about this concept in theory many times and aside tonight I wanted to just kind of visualize this in a little bit more detail And as we can stop talking about this in a purely hypothetical Scenario and let's look at this in terms of real world application of what is being argued by the evolution camp that somehow these new functions have just come into existence at your directive process and mutation Thank you very much. We Will kick it over to team evolution and we'll give them the same flexibility in terms of their opening statements So if you guys need an extra minute or two, we can do that. And so the floor is all yours Erica and sigh. Thanks so much Cool. So I think I'm going first. So I will go ahead and move to sharing my screen Sai and I discussed I uh, I'm a little more along winded than sigh So I might be taking a little bit of a bias here on who is spending more time um in the opening statement And um, I will just go ahead and start now So my presentation is titled evolution Biodiversity's mechanism because that is put simply what evolution is the backdrop here is a bunch of anthropoid primates I I love all of these primates and in particular. I love how all of these primates are incredibly well suited for their environments They're all anthropoid monkeys. They're all essentially the same thing And yet their environments are different and they've tackled life's problems in different ways This is what we would call natural selection So let's talk about the case that Sai and I are making today So Sai and I are making the case that life and modern biodiversity is the result of biological evolution by natural selection The case that we are not making is that this process definitively precludes someone or something Implementing evolution as a mechanism or perhaps spurring a biogenesis as people directly involved in science And with the scientific method in general Our goal is always to analyze the data testing via experiment when we can letting the results lead us to the conclusion With the understanding that such a conclusion may change as our data does Now in science, parsimony is key Currently every relevant field in science agrees that evolution by natural selection is the most parsimonious explanation for biodiversity on earth This is incredibly important because many of these fields are largely independent of one another and yet They're reaching this same conclusion Nearly as important is the ability of evolutionary theory to make correct predictions So i'm going to make some predictions for this debate and they're not really predictions now because you guys went first But uh that our opponents are going to have models that boil down to the following simplified statements This is this is absolutely simplifying it intentionally But i think john is going to argue that dna is a code codes require coders Thus young earth intelligent design is a thing because both our opponents are indeed young earth intelligent design advocates And that otangelo is going to argue that various aspects of biology are irreducibly complex Thus young earth intelligent design is a thing And i think that i was kind of dead on on both of those now as far as models go neither of these statements can act actively as a model They're they're just statements and and that's kind of my problem with both of them But the interesting thing is We're apes the earth is old and evolution happens regardless of the nature of a biogenesis or the complexity or irreducible The urges will nature of it So let's talk about some of the cool predictions that evolution evolutionary theory makes that id doesn't So intelligent or sorry intelligence design So evolutionary theory predicted that life can be traced back to a single or a handful of common ancestors This has been shown to be the case via thousands of phylogenetic analyses All of which show a gradient of shared and novel traits across life with no line in between the claves Evolutionary theory also predicted that the genome would contain gratuitous redundancy and junk dna That's kind of what we call it. Now while this is contested by some members of encode back in 2012 Subsequent work specifically some knockout tests as well as testimony from actual encode researchers themselves Have shown us that the maximum functionality for the human genome is likely between 12 to 25 Primarily encodes results come from a very generous usage of the word of what the definition rather of the word functional So this is a very generous estimate for full functionality and i can i'm happy to have that discussion Evolutionary theory predicted that endogenous retroviruses were the remnants of ancient viruses embedded in the genomes of organisms Which can aid in tracing lineages these ervs revert back to behaving like viruses when xeno transplanted and they corroborate classic phylogenies Evolutionary theory predicted that humans would be shown to be genetically closest to the great apes Recapitulating what the morphology dictated decades earlier even creationist taxonomists were saying this Linnaeus was famous for saying, you know, I'm going to bring down the wrath of all the theologians because I Simply can't figure out a reason to put humans as not apes Now not only are chimpanzees and bonobos our closest living relatives But our shared similarity across the genome is greater than both those shared between rats and mice And those shared between lions and tigers this technology is literally like a souped up paternity test So it's not super complicated Morphology, of course corroborates this every single trait that we have that would make a gorilla a gorilla or chimpanzee a chimpanzee And all of you know, both of them apes also includes humans as being members of the hominoid group We have the y-shaped molar. We have the brain to body size ratio. We have the limb ratio within error bars This is just the case when you're classifying humans. That's where we land But paleontology is important too because evolutionary theory predicted that we would see morphologic change over geologic time between any Species separated by significant periods evolutionary theory predicted that none of these transitional forms would be hindered by their half Structures the evolution of any given trait must offer a fitness benefit at any stage that it's in and boy Do we see that we see it in the tetrapods which each with each of these species being a Stellar animal in its own right morphologic change through geologic time We see it in the whales morphologic change over geologic time from terrestrial mammal to aquatic mammal And we see it in birds morphologic change over geologic time from non feathered theropods up through Archaeopteryx and indeed to the modern birds Of course anthropology is where I care about it because I study extant primates Evolutionary theory predicted that we would find dozens of morphologically distinct ape species separated by geologic time in the fossil record That show a gradient in the emergence of human traits from the ape traits and boy Howdy do we see this I have asked dozens of creationists Where we draw the line here which of these skulls are ape and which of these skulls are human And not only do they all give inconsistent answers that differ wildly from one another But not a single one can present criteria for how we can actually delineate Which is ape and which is human of course the problem is humans are apes We have all of the traits that they have so it's impossible to delineate We could also talk about the importance of the transitional species such as the australopithecines which occupy what you know Any creationists would have begged to see back in the 60s. It's a perfect ape man We've got the parabolic palette the bull shaped pelvis the inline big toe We've got the ferumen magnum in the right position the angle of the valgas knee and of the femoral head is appropriate But she's also important because evolutionary theory predicted that geologic time would separate the slow morphologic change dictated by natural selection It also predicted that the environment is always changing and organisms will change in tandem Geochemistry allows us to peer into paleo environments and accurately construct ancient environmental conditions Which has led us to discover more about the five mass extinctions Each of these five mass extinctions alone precludes young earth creationism and thus young earth intelligent design due to the conditions Necessary for their existence being absolutely impossible to cram into 6000 years Which leads me to my point on physics, which is that evolutionary theory in tandem with geology predicted that earth was very ancient indeed This is supported by the radioactive decay law Now the radioactive decay law covers the nature of decay rates and tells us that they don't change in meaningful ways over time Creationists admit this the rate team a team of a crack team of creationist geologists discontinued in 2005 had to admit That a young earth position cannot be reconciled with the scientific data without assuming that exotic solutions will be discovered in the future No known thermodynamic process could account for the required rate of heat removal Nor is there any known way to protect organisms from radiation damage This is the problem when you cram 4.5 to 4.8 billion years of heat into a 6000 year time period You end up with a hot mess at minimum You're vaporizing the granitic crust of the earth several times over and at maximum you're dealing with enough heat to to match 5000 trillion one megaton H bombs roughly 2.2 times 10 raised 38 ERGs or an earth's worth of TNT Now radiometric dating gets poo pooed on by a lot of creationists But one thing we can all agree on is that people like money in a 257 billion dollar a year industry depends on radiometric dating working via basin modeling Actually, my fiance's brother works is working in an oil field right now in west texas and they're working on a permean site But statistics is the newest and more one of my new favorites to use when talking about intelligent design because Statistics tell us tells us that common ancestry is essentially Assured statistically speaking using a Bayesian analysis for those of you who may not know a small p value is good when you're testing Hypothesis because it tells you that whether or not you can reject the null Now this paper to the left says we overwhelmingly rejected both species and family separate ancestry This is specifically within the primates Due to infinitesimal p values many of these data sets reject species separate ancestry strongly The probability of obtaining a test statistic more extreme than the one observed under species separate ancestry model Is essentially approaching or greatly exceeding the probability of picking a correct data at random Among the estimated 10 to the 80th atoms in the known universe and then they did this again with homologous proteins Actually was the reverse they did them all this proteins first and then they did the primate one So evolution makes thousands of predictions each and every year from the truly important strides in virology and medicine Like those seen in hiv to what i did with my thesis with primates just comparing their dentition and sexual dimorphism Intelligent design predicts nothing This is the problem. It is the model that wasn't people who who who propone for rather who propose intelligent design Can't denote created kinds they cannot grapple in a younger if contest at least with um context at least Which both our opponents are with the overwhelming evidence for an ancient earth from geology and physics as well as the morphologic change over Geologic time they cannot clarify specifically what makes a design a design And most importantly intelligent design lacks any semblance of a model or testable predictions and relies almost entirely on poking holes in evolution As such it has an abysmal literature base and can't base and cannot be taken seriously as a scientific hypothesis alongside more Robust works works such as evolutionary theory, which leads me to my conclusion Talking super fast, which is while we can enjoy a fun discussion Conventional science will still chug onward while we're having this paying little to no mind to the id community Consistently utilizing evolutionary theory to better the world around us and that's fine. That's my presentation Thanks so much eric erica. We will be switching it over to dr. Seigart. The floor is all yours Thank you. And uh, I'd like to thank each of my co Debaters here for their presentations. Also Before I forget. I just want to wish everyone a merry christmas. It's a couple of days from now if i'm not mistaken so So I mean that's a hard act to follow what erica just presented so I i'm not going to try to uh to expand on anything that she said Uh, my view is uh somewhat unusual perhaps Uh, let me let me show. I only have one slide to show so if I could do that james I will Attempt it. Absolutely Okay Is that visible? Yes, okay It's my contention that actually Evolution is not controversial Uh and Just to start that off. This is a slide from the the uh answers and genesis website and if you look at the uh What you what you see on the on the right there in red and then branching into yellow is a Biogenetic tree looks very familiar to any evolutionist And the difference of course is that it starts with something called the A created cat kind Which is a species of animal That survived got on the ark unlike other Potential members of that family And once it got off the ark it then Diversified into all the species of felix that we see today And in fact that part of the curve From the ark forward looks Very much and if you go into the details, it's almost identical to the kind of evolutionary tree That we draw when we do phylogenetics Now why is it that answers and genesis which is one of the premier young earth creation is anti evolutionist groups Actually talks about evolution and by the way they they contend that This is evolution almost the same way as the way evolutionary biologists think of it in other words it Curse through natural selection radiation Mutation that's some slight differences there But the reason they had to do that is because it was very clear that no matter how large the ark all the current species on earth could not possibly fit And so what the comment is then then that the that the bible talks about kinds and it was the kinds That incorporated all the current species and once they got off the ark we had the process of evolution And uh, I can stop sharing. Uh, here it is. Okay So Evolute and and in fact we also hear I don't know how Microevolution is a thing it There's a very little debate for example that bacteria can evolve to have Uh resistance to antibiotics and other examples of evolution within a species So the real argument Is not whether evolution is true or not. The real argument is what can evolution explain and what can it not explain? and The first thing to talk about is a biogenesis the origin of the origin of life Which I don't believe evolution can explain and and many other evolutionary creationists as I am uh, also Think that a biogenesis is off on its own. In fact, everybody thinks that way Richard Dawkins Doesn't talk about a biogenesis in relation to evolution Darwin never mentioned the origin of life. He mentioned it actually only very briefly, but had no clue And evolutionary theory is not equipped to deal With things like the origin of the genetic code with things even like The origin of photosynthesis Many of the amazingly complex and beautiful systems that we find in life occurred Probably before what we call the last common universe last universal common ancestor luca And in a way, I think of luca as the analogy to the big bang We can we can't go much back before luca. We don't know how luca arose So there's all kinds of possible answers for that and a lot of research is going on It's after luca That we understand that evolution now plays a role through the normal mechanism of natural selection replication mutation, etc And then we get to humans and this relates somewhat to otangelo's Remarks, but I won't I won't go into it at this moment. We'll save it for the discussion But again, I believe that when we get to humans, we do have some real problems In using evolutionary theory to explain everything we know about human beings I'm not talking about the the the physical Anthropology that erica was talking about that I think is fairly clear I'm talking about behavioral aspects including language Including some brain function of humans that really are I don't I agree with otangelo. We're really quite remarkable uh now The question comes up about design Uh, got about a minute. Again, it turns out that design is something that is almost universally agreed to richard dawkins talks about design in biology Again, the argument is not whether biology and living systems have designed But how did they get designed and there are many answers to that? But it's very difficult to argue against the possibility of design So, uh, I think with that Yeah, I'm just about done. So, uh, we'll go on to the discussion Thanks so much and want to remind you everybody that all of our guests are linked in the description So if you'd like to hear more from them, you can click on those links below We'll jump into open conversation. The floor is all yours all well real quick before we get uh Before we get going since as usual erica spewed the usual talking points Even though never mentioned one thing about young earth or uh deep time in either one of our opening statements She wanted to go down that rabbit hole. Um, but since she addressed me talking about code erica. Um, dr. Gart um, could you please? Educate the individuals that are watching this right now that the Genetic code is a literal code is not metaphor nor is it simile Uh, and I watched I had a very fun time watching you work with jeffrey williams where he went down that rabbit hole And ironically sir, um, I actually had a debate and had multiple conversations with your partner and uh, she also holds that it's not a literal code So, um, would you mind informing her and the rest of the audience here on mdb? That it's actually a literal code not metaphor simile John that's inaccurate with the last conversation We had what I said to you was what i'm arguing is that there's a debate Some people say there isn't some people say there isn't we had this chat like last I'm pretty sure that this has been answered quite some time ago. So that's why i'm asking, uh, the The the phd in the room if that has been well established for quite some time This is actually a code. It's not being debated inside the holes of academia in terms of what's actually being executed inside biological systems Yeah, that's correct. Um, and and I I agree with erica I I we she and I had discussed this and I never heard her say that dna is not a code The genetic code is not a code, but anyway to answer You i'm talking about hers if you watch my debate if you watch my debate with her not that long You would come to a very different conclusion, but okay Well, anyway to answer the question I've not only it's one of my pet peeves with atheists and by the way not with scientists but with atheists Who have come up with this very strange idea that the genetic code is a metaphor for a code And uh, I actually have on my on my youtube channel. I actually have a response video to Rationality rules who made this point in a video in 2017 And it's inaccurate. He gets a lot of things wrong. I mean basic biology. He gets wrong So yeah, uh The genetic code is definitely a code It has all the features of a code. It does whatever everything a code does It's the first code the first example of something that means something else in the universe And it's of course in all of life um But having said that The question of the genetic codes existence Is as I said not answered by evolution I know people who are studying the evolution of the genetic code and it's an extremely difficult topic Because it because it belongs in the abiogenesis Well, let me let me ask for clarification on that then because um, I have directly written. I read papers and seeing quite a few discussions about The variations in the genetic code being the direct result of evolution not the origin but the Very few variations of it That's quite that's that's right. So, uh, I would have to say I would disagree with you in the context that Uh, those changes are attempting to be explained and defended by Evolutionary theory. Yeah, and I don't really understand and I'd love to get your opinion on this um, you know when we have Things that are start and stop codons that can be amino acid Or reciprocals, etc. Etc. Um, I'm not really sure how without having simultaneous Multiple simultaneous mutations inside of a system for Uh translation and obviously, you know without collapse approaching synthesis like how is it a remotely plausible Scenario in which that can be accounted for It's very difficult and and very rare and that's why all of these, um variations are either in mitochondria or in very primitive organisms Some of which have very high mutation rates You're right. It's it takes at least two mutations one in the tRNA genes and one in The aminoacyl amino aminoacyl tRNA synthetase genes To have a change in the code, but the real problem with evolution of code Is kind of what you alluded to if you suddenly have a stop code on which used to code the lysine All those proteins that have lysine now stop in the wrong place. So They're very rare But occasionally they can happen and I actually have a slide on this but I I think I'll show it later if we If we need to Well, I appreciate you uh, you clarify that because that's that's one of the things I think gets glossed over on a very regular basis So, yeah, it actually have to be accounted for in this and then from a macro view and we're talking about You know expansion, uh, you know, oh, we have a duplicate gene that just turns into a new uh functional Uh protein outcome Well, let me kind of forget about like what's actually having to be accomplished to result in this new novel function It's not just oh, it's a little bit different Let me address that because you you you raised that question in your opening to me How how is it possible to get? Uh, you know the kind of thing that you showed with your with your, uh software code how how does that work in proteins and That's a real good question and evolutionary biologists have considered about I thought about it and proposed various things There's an answer from a evolutionary biologist named Uh, Andreas Wagner He's german. Uh, he wrote a book called the arrival of the fittest And what he uh admits is that it's not enough just to have Just to say okay, you have a mutation and you get a new a more fit phenotype How do you get to that fit phenotype? When you have as you showed you have a set of codons which code for very specific protein That works quite well And now you have a mutation. What are the chances that that mutation is going to make the protein quote better or more fit? and Here's where biology or biochemistry differs from software And that is it's extremely robust Uh, the robustness of proteins is Quite remarkable and by robustness what I mean is And this is what Wagner and other people have also done Is if you take a particular protein sequence and you make changes in it We do site specific mutagenesis. You change one amino acid for another It's amazing how many changes you can make and the protein still retains its function That's what is meant by robustness. And so what he did was he kept making changes and he kept getting the same Uh function out of the protein even when several Sometimes even half of the amino acids in a protein had been altered to a different amino acid And then he made one more change and all of a sudden a different function appeared because Now that last change was such that it changed the confirmation of the protein. It changed the active site It changed what substrates could could bind to it So all of a sudden you have What looks like wow a mutation out of the blue, but in fact It's a mutation that occurred after several other mutations that had no effect on the protein function There they're precursor mutations. Yes, exactly So the other thing that's very important to understand is that We talk about evolution occurring from mutations And most people and I did too at one point think that okay an animal's walking around everything's fine get some mutation and now it changes And it gets natural selection. That's almost never happens. What mutations do Is they cause variation in the proteins? So within a population you'll have within the four of us, for example, if you take any gene We'll have slight differences in in that in the gene sequence Not because we had a mutation, but we inherited that mutation from some previous ancestor Now So you could have a mutation Most mutations are harmful and they and they kill the cell and that's it. Who cares the cell goes away The the next largest group are neutral. They have no effect So you have all these neutral mutations hanging around that don't really have any positive effect And then and then the environment changes. It gets colder And so if you had a mutation that caused longer hair Not when it happened, but maybe 10 000 years later Those animals that have that longer hair do better than the ones with the shorter hair So now that mutation has produced a selective advantage Didn't do it by it didn't do it originally it did it when the environment had the effect On the fitness of that mutation Now in line with that, I don't want you and I to be dominated this so Folks feel arena jump in here, but I mean I hear those types of supposed defenses of evolutionary theory on a regular basis, but as we discover more and more were Realizing you know, maybe not in every case but in many many cases we're starting to discover that The capacity for that longer hair already existed And now is being expressed so that would this ultimately boils back down to the Dramatic difference, you know in the chart you put up there. Oh, there's this very similar phylogenetic trees, etc Etc. I'm like, okay fair enough. No problem. Um, the key difference is was the Capacity pre-existing or did it form after the fact the thing is That's the primary thing because Erica. Yes, it does if the capacity already existed then your entire your entire concept of evolution coming from things that do not yet exist And then being created new novel functions coming to existence through undirect through mutation natural selection Is dramatically different than the capacity already being in place And now being expressed based on the new environmental variable factors, which we are now being able to Clearly delineate in research and then beyond that the last thing i'm gonna say i'll shut up for a while is I find it very entertaining Erica that you continue to try and push go down the rabbit hole of the non The junk dna the non-functional genome because that is The literal antithesis of that is what's being discovered. No, i'm sorry john you're i'm gonna finish my point and i'm gonna shut up Short and pithy john Have we or have we not been discovering all the way up until this year based on new observation technologies That research technologies that there's whole portions of the genome that we thought were completely in operable didn't do anything But now based on cell type It turns out whole chunks of the genome that we thought had no function no activity whatsoever We're now discovering oh wait It's totally active but only in this cell type because up until relatively recently a we were not being able to look at Things in vivo and b we were looking at mostly, you know the same types of uh cell types versus looking at the Uh going into deeper and deeper detail of the hundreds of different cell types that we have Got you want to give air And once we hear well, let's give erica plenty of time to respond and then also Uh, eventually we'll work our way to poor otangelo who hasn't come to talk yet. Go ahead, erica Yeah, yeah, so first of all no john is entirely incorrect on that and i've actually not only have I asked plenty of people But this is like open source on google scholar You can look at the encode researchers comments on the project themselves What john is talking about is the fact that we are increasingly finding smaller and smaller and smaller portions of the genome that sometimes has some function with regard to Regulation or it's doing some new thing or whatever But this is why I mentioned knockout tests in my opener because you can take a mouse and knock out half of the Things genome and this animal is going to move forward have mouse babies with another mouse And those mice are also capable of reproduction and what that suggests and when I say suggests I mean heavily supports is the fact that most of the genome is not doing anything Now that's kind of the point because evolutionary predicted that there would be quite a bit of redundancy So not only are you incorrect in in what the literature is actually saying but experimentally that that idea has been blown away Quite some time ago Because because john jumped around to quite a few topics as well, you know, he you do the touch and go Now with regard to the deep time as I explained in my opener deep time is irrevocably tied to evolutionary theory The reason deep time is brought up and why I bring it up every time is because not only are you and otangelo both vocal young earth creationists But deep time and evolution cross corroborate one another at every single level So the two are or you can't parse them apart and in fact geology offers some of the most concrete Preclusions not just to um, not just to young earth creationism But because of how it corroborates, um evolutionary theory Indirectly this creates huge problems for intelligent design. The last thing I want to say is again I and you know, absolutely no Disagreement with with sigh, you know, I don't know what um kind of what what literature he's read on it but I so prepare for this I read quite a quite a decent literature search and yes There are as I said in our conversation last week john There are individuals who say the dna is a literal code There are other individuals that say it is metaphorically a code and there are yet still others who say that it has nothing to do with the Code and a better a better analogy because of how proteins are assembled within The actual cells would be an ingredient list So, you know, you can say this is done. This is over with whatever But that's just not what the literature is saying and and I would know I read all your papers and took notes on them So, so Erica Even if it's hang on, hang on. She just directly she just directly addressed me. Hang on. I have two sentences. I have two sentences Erica, even if it's She just addressed me james and I'm gonna shut up after this I'm I'm happy with what I've said And I can provide links as well if need be to back up every claim that I've made or you can just go back and watch My power point where I've cited my sources Yes, I want to add in regards of dna There is always a confusion here when someone says dna is a code or it's In a metaphorical way a code in my understanding dna is not a code. What do I mean with that dna is a semantephoretic A molecule it is like a hard disk in the computer. So dna is just The oxyribonucleotide. So what happens? It stores actually genetic information through the genetic code. Why? Because the codones, they are triplet codones which are assigned to amino acids and there are 64 different Triplet codones which assigned to 20 amino acids. So there is an assignment here And we are talking about that assignment which is actually the code or a cipher or However, you want to call it and the huge problem here for naturalists for materialists Is that assignment or giving meaning to something always comes from intelligence? So you have to account for the fact that these three nucleotides these codones They are assigned to 20 amino acids. So where does that assignment come from? That is one problem. The other problem is you have genetic information stored in the genome which directs the making of proteins and also The making of micro RNAs which direct The the expression of genome to the gene regulatory network So and then you have also to account for the hardware this that is like for example ribosome Which is an extremely complex factory, which is in a literal sense a factory Which produces and assembles proteins in an enormously complex manner and The ribosome is life essential Materialists they have to account for and explain how the ribosome could have merged pre biologically before actually life life even started and we are talking here about a molecular factory which has about 200 assembly proteins that the ribosome has to be assembled first It has 75 cofactors which help to assemble the ribosome And there are signaling pathways inside the ribosome. There are the 20 pr the 64 tRNAs Which also are essential. There are the amino acid tRNAs which are essential This is a multi-part factory which has to work in a joint venture together in order to manufacture proteins And got just because there are a lot of points I I do want to We do have to kind of switch over to someone new soon just because there's a lot to keep track of both for The speakers and the audience Uh, if either sigh erica runs to respond and then I know that john had a response for erica that we have to get back to Yeah, so I but be be my guest. I talk Well, I I mean uh, ultangela knows that I that I agree with him about Uh, the genetic code the the ribosome and I I think that as I said in my opening the issue of abiogenesis is An incredibly difficult controversial and uh wide open field of science That I believe uh, also because I am a christian. I believe also should include theology But I don't see that with evolution. In other words, as I said before once once We have luca once we have a cell that has those amazing Uh components in it And I mentioned the couple but there are many more than that once we have that I don't see the argument against evolution either scientifically Theologically or any or logically in fact now One thing I think is important and and this goes to john Is is really to understand that when you when you study biology and I think everyone here knows this Uh, you find that logic doesn't work very well. Okay. There are a lot of things about biology that really Define logical. It's not the way we would do it. Okay, which is why I don't like the term intelligent design I believe there is design in life. I call it the vine design because I think it It originates from god, but But it it's not like we're really that god is a really clever software engineer and kind of made things the way we do And what I think about evolution is that it's a natural law It's it's a natural law like gravity. It's a beautiful natural law and Theologically I believe that god created all natural laws including gravity including evolution And it's brilliant because it works and it works in a way That we don't we're not completely sure that we understand every detail of how it works There are some places that have to be filled in But erica pointed out the amazing consistencies between You know, both fossil records Molecular biology genetic analysis Everything fits together to give a very coherent picture of the general picture of evolution And the reason I I stressed that, you know, even young earth creationists accept some form of evolution is because It's really undeniable, but that's the way life works And I I I think it I actually think it's time To sort of maybe drop arguments against evolution. Maybe combine them with intelligent design to some degree if if that Theologically useful In line with what you're saying there, I think it seems to go back to a key point that I did not to you I'm not directing my best say to you, but it seems to you the vast majority of the Just say atheist evolution types that I deal with online The entire premise of something being Pre-programmed seems to fly over their head of pre-existing capacity and Through adaptation and species and the pre-existing templates, if you will that can be expressed to create a new A new species already being pre-existent To be honest when you actually look at things You see this like the capacities were here Now we have alteration and now we have this In your point that you were making about Uh, we wouldn't do it this way. It's not logical. I'm gonna actually have to categorically disagree with you What you're actually stating or what's what's I think led to your position You just took there is that up until very very recently our technology wasn't at a level to even understand What the hell is going on from a technological perspective inside of our bodies? So when we're getting into dual use syntax, we're getting into three-dimensional scaffolding We're in terms. I'm talking about from a coding perspective when we're getting into simultaneous computation And all the different things that are occurring inside of our bodies to enable life to exist and for these complex systems to function We didn't even know it was possible To be done now in computer technology and nanotech that humans are trying to accomplish right now We're like, oh my goodness. We didn't even know that this we didn't even know to look for this, right? so now for example, um, we know that there's multiplex coding going on inside of the genome and We thought about that right up until relatively recent modern times the and by that I mean like last You know 30 years the it wasn't even remotely plausible to be able to actually do that We know about it in theory, but actually Executing that technologically was not even remotely feasible. Now. We're finding out. This is exactly what's happening in enabling life to exist and so the point I'm making is to Take the position that Because we don't know how something does or our technology hasn't quite gotten an advance yet Is not evidence in favor of Uh intelligent agency being an active player Uh, I don't mean this as an interest in imagination. I mean it just comes from like humans in general We didn't even know it was possible And yet we've been arguing that all this stuff happened without that Requirement being in the equation. Um, to me, that's like a child Uh coming in and being like, oh, well, that's just how it happens And then you're the parent looking at and being like hang on There's a ridiculous amount of engineering that went into, you know, this toy you're playing with kind of thing. Does that make sense? Yeah, well, there's a There's a uh a member of discovery institute michael dentin. I I don't know if you've read this so he is a great fan of of Richard hoenn who who was a contemporary of darwin who Postulated that there were biological laws that we don't understand and that's very much in tune with what you're saying about capacity So I just give an example. We know this is a lot of a lot of creatures can fly Okay insects birds bats from all different phyla and they all fly a fairly similar way They all fly by flapping wings and creating a vacuum underneath and But there's no creature that has ever developed jet propulsion Now there's no reason why they couldn't because there are jets in biology. There are creatures that shoot water or air out the back but no creature has ever figured out how to how to fly with jet propulsion and Okay, that might that's a sort of a silly thing to say except that This may be an indication of some kind of biological law that not everything is possible and eric and goat can go into more detail on this Yeah, I'd love to just a second. Yeah, I'll just finish One thing that's important to know about evolution is it doesn't promise everything There are laws. There are Things that as you said capabilities capacities that biology has and and some that they don't have and so You know Not everything goes and I know erica has more to say Yeah, so I totally agree with you Si I mean the the the evolution of organisms is entirely constrained by the environment that it's in This this is exactly how creatures change to meet the needs and increase the fitness in a given environment This is why oftentimes people mix up what fitness is and why it's important to define because For instance a bacteria that may wreak havoc in your body When when in the presence of antibiotics will will be destroyed and then you get antibiotic resistance And then all of a sudden this organism is thriving in the antibiotic resistance environment Then you put it back in the original one and it's let's it's less fit than its progenitor Well, that's because fitness is defined by an environment I want to talk about something really quickly that I that I think is very Very interesting about this conversation to me. It seems like from the intelligent design team what we see a lot of is incredulity at the micro level and Missing the forest for the trees at the macro level So it's it's a lot of I don't think that x can happen at the micro level Therefore allow me to impose arbitrary lines in what a species at a macro level can or cannot do Now this would be fine if it weren't for the fact that Multiple fields corroborate the fact that large organisms can cross these boundaries and frequently do So this is my problem with intelligent design and and you know I've met plenty of theistic evolutionists and and regular biologists alike And this is why id isn't typically taken seriously in conventional science because there's no model It doesn't make any predictions All it does is is point at things that look complex like the genetic code or cells being factories and say How could that happen and you know, I study as everyone here knows large species So change in large species isn't there's not really all that much going on You've already like like I said earlier at luca. You've got all the equipment there It's small tweaking to get this vast array of biodiversity that we see in the itty bitty little corner of the tree of life That is multi cellular organisms. And so because of that macro evolution is is Really and truly doing all of these things. This is what evolution predicts. This is what we see in molecular phylogenies This is what's recapitulated in the fossil record And and multiple different levels of each of these fields cross corroborate one another So two different molecular phylogenies will corroborate the age of the earth will corroborate Certain layers where fossils are found and where those fossils are found will corroborate the molecular divergence of two species So from an intelligent design position Especially from a young earth intelligent design position what you guys in my opinion and you know, you can take that for what's worth What you have to do is you have to present a competing model that can not just say Here's a couple of ideas, but say my idea is better and precludes your idea because x y z But i've never heard that from any folks at id um and and um, I don't think that I will so I'll pass it on to the angel Of course If creator was involved to create life and biodiversity And he will not repeat the event so we cannot test it But what we know is that intelligence can instantiate certain features like Multi-part irreducible complex machines which require foresight with with a distant goal And we see that actually not only in biogenesis in regards to the origin of life But also for example in regard to photosynthesis which emerged very early in the history of life And if you have studied it then erica, you know that photosynthesis is enormously complex and we have there for example the oxygen Evolving complex which makes oxygen and if you go into the details and into the proteins You will see that there are three or four proteins Which are involved in splitting the water and there is the molybdenum center The the the the cofactor which is also involved and you need you need a water Environment around it, which is actually produced by these proteins and if that is not there You will not have the split of of Water and you will not have oxygen and you will not have advanced life So once you don't have an explanation just for A feature like this You can forget the entire narrative that no intelligence was necessary to create all biodiversity Now in regards to pollution, I think there is a broad agreement that micro evolution and speciation That that occurs, but that is actually second secondary Speciation which is split of populations which cannot be pleased anymore But the big question which has never been demonstrated is the rise of Of big difference and new features like eyes like ears like legs like bones like multicellularity all these kind of things and That is a big open question and science has no explanation on this now the gene-centric new erica I think it is long due that this has be put behind because we know that epigenetic information Is far a bigger factor actually that which directs the construction of Body architecture than only genetic information alone I catalog over 30 epigenetic Codes which are all involved in construction of organism form and I think the view has to be shifted from a gene-centric view To a holistic view or to a systems biology view where many or more factors are actually Considered and that is epigenetic codes that this signaling pathways And that is in special gene regulatory network, which you cannot simply change or mutate of david's on which was basically a Pioneer in research of the gene regulatory network. He made it very clear that you cannot just Mutate things than expected things will go well. No, there is very very narrow Space to change things and if you don't then the whole thing goes havoc and doesn't work So I think that the view has to be expanded where epigenetic information is taken into consideration to explain large organismal construction And once that you consider that you have to ask yourself. Well, do unguided Events actually account for that kind of complexity and I would say no because all these epigenetic codes They have also to be explained. Where did they come from first? You have to actually make them and then like for example in histones There is the histone code and there are the histone tail which is read by readers Which is erased and there are other other proteins which actually write on the histone code and there is communication between them and that regulates how the the histones are the Genetic information is expressed And all that kind of complexity which is far greater than anyone has ever imagined That has to be accounted for and I think that natural unguided non-intelligent mechanisms simply are not sufficient To explain that kind of complexity Well, you know Just as a parenthetical, uh, I published two papers in the last few years about gene regulatory networks Uh, and these are model networks. I didn't look at actual Real biological networks because that's extremely difficult, but I found the models To be so With only a few genes like five genes when you start looking at how these things work It's it's what otangelo said. It's staggeringly complex But that happens simply because of the mathematical and uh, I guess you could say stochastic nature of what happens when you have One thing that regulates other things that's had, you know, that regulate themselves and go back and forth and And so what you it is true that you can you can derive The idea that these very complex systems Must have been designed by an intelligent designer But it's also true that in many cases including for example, you're the uh arising of certain gene regulatory networks They can also arise because of stochastic processes that lead to Naturally just in the computer And john may be able to back me up on this you can get incredibly complex results Just by writing the right code and writing the right model and having it go And you know people have done that So I don't think that complexity by itself is a sign of Non-evolution or of intelligent design. I think I think in some ways complex when you talk about the protein synthesis system I agree that level of complexity and that level of Just I don't even have a word for complexity. It's not a good word. It's just amazing That's really hard to explain from an evolutionary point of view But as I said, we're talking a biogenesis here and there's no good model Uh, actually john asked me at the very beginning about replication fidelity. Did you did you did that right? Yes, sir So i'll just say very quickly that my last paper, uh, which just is still in press It's about to come out was on that issue on the question of replication fidelity and Yeah, it in order for life to work Including survival and evolution the the accuracy of uh DNA replication is 99.99999 percent It can't be a hundred percent because there has to be some Very some errors to allow for variation in mutation But the accuracy is incredibly high and not just for dna replication, but also for protein synthesis And that and you can't explain that as an evolutionary model so So did you um I think in line with this one thing has to be discussed in The how that fidelity is accomplished is the error correction mechanisms. That's right. So that's how it's accomplished There are error correction mechanisms that are I mean whoever you are whether you You read about these things and you just say oh my god. Wow. I mean this that's amazing stuff and uh And they're all over the place these error correction mechanisms. Did they evolve? Well, they might have evolved if evolution was possible. The problem is that before you had accurate replication You couldn't have evolution Because evolution requires accurate replication So that's a real problem and and that's that's what i'm focusing on but it's up to that I think need is taken for granted is from a communication theory information theory perspective everything that we're doing in our technology right now Is we have Incredibly complex multiple layers of error correction codes, right? They're separate from just the actual information code. You have error correction codes themselves That's right that are needed in order to account for the noise in the transmission channel, right and We I mean this we have the literal parallel Yes, yeah, and I agree and I'm not saying I know you agree So I'm just saying I think something has to be looked at from the macro view of all of these things is these things exist It's not just like they're in place and For me this in context what you're talking about like protein synthesis, for example the I mean just the differences between prokaryote versus eukaryote to me is rather significant and That's in the that's under the quote-unquote You know evolution umbrella is going from the prokaryote transcription translation process to the eukaryote And to my knowledge nobody has an answer for that Am I wrong? I mean I can see to you if there is an answer for that but as far as I know there is not No, I don't know of it. I think there may be one but In other words that the really major molecular changes that go on from prokaryote to eukaryote translation Are not understood In terms of mechanism of how they develop Recent work on it that I can put in the comments. They may be that I'm not aware of. Yeah, that'd be good But it but these are all areas of research and I speaking of which And this is this is expanding on something Erica said You know evolutionary biology is not fixed and static Darwinism is long gone. Whatever that originally was Neodarwinism is long gone So evolutionary biology like most good scientific theories is in constant flux and continuously changing and I've written about something called the Extended evolutionary synthesis which includes some of the things everyone has talked about horizontal gene transfer epigenetics, which what Angela mentioned A lot of other things niche construction. There's a lot more Interesting mechanisms for how evolution works than the original. Okay. It's a point mutation is structural gene You get a change in the genotype change in phenotype natural selection. Boom That's oversimplified. That's not a good theory anymore and and nobody in evolutionary biology Except maybe somebody like Richard Dawkins who's not really a scientist anymore, but you know He's he's slow to catch on but you know the whole endosymbiogenesis from from Oh, what's her name? Lynn Margulis. Thank you. Yes, right Uh, uh, Lynn Margulis and uh, you know all these other ideas. I mean Dennis Noble who is a uh, a British physiologist has written some great books about Not about anti gene centric Stuff, okay, that it's not the genes. It's other stuff. It's holistic So a lot of the arguments that I'm hearing that you guys are making I'm agreeing with because they're they're actually part of evolutionary theory Okay, evolutionary theory is is not your grandfather's evolutionary theory. It's it's not even my evolutionary theory because I'm pretty old Can I add something on to on to that side that I think is really important is that You know If you're walking through the desert and you stumble across across some kind of pyramid or structure You see the structure and you think oh, wow, that's really cool Like someone ancient built this structure obviously or maybe I don't know if you're an ancient aliens person Then you're like, oh wow, I mean, I think that stuff is um Not a not a big fan But you look at this structure and you would say this structure exists Here are all of the facets of this structure We can study the structure we can study the nature of the structure And we can get a ton of information about that without knowing how that structure was built Um, you know, it's kind of like the the origins or bust thing is kind of It's very silly to me as someone who looks at the at the large scale stuff Because it's like, you know, take a computer for instance, I can look at my computer I can know what my computer does. I can know how to code things on it I can tell you a lot of stuff about it I don't need to know who made it to to to do that and the fact of the matter is Hey, would you deny that somebody had to make it? Well in the case of the computer. Yes for part of the example and the pyramid We can switch it to an arch. I mean, let's say Okay, so it's the technology that enables you to exist more or less complex and more intricate and more interdependent Well, let's see. I mean, I'm using it for a simple segue But if you want to get into it, we can use an example I used with Otangelo the other day when we were discussing. I'm happy to do that, John No, I'm saying if you're going to go down the rabbit hole, I would I don't need to know about who created it Are I can't are you making the statement that we should just ignore trying to figure out who? Oh, or are you saying that we can't actually make the inference? No, no, no What have I done in place? The case that I'm making is that regardless of how a biogenesis happened whether someone did it or whether Someone implemented the fine-tuning to it doesn't change the fact that you're an ape You're related to other apes and that animals change on the large scale in the theater If it's very ancient and that these things corroborate each other How many different novel genes are there between us and chimps? Very very few less than between rats and mice, John It's not 1400 It's less than between rats and mice comparatively when you account for the size of the entire genome Okay, so how many base pairs is that? The differences between humans and chimps. Yeah, well, it depends on how you're measuring it Well, I mean it somewhere between at the low end 35 million, correct? Wait, wait, wait, are you trying to are you trying to do this on like a oh humans and chimps actually aren't as close as people say? Is that what I'm no, no, we're talking about from a plausibility perspective You're claiming this is just a totally reasonable thing to conclude this somehow happened. Okay, so How much time it from your model without you that doesn't you make kind of my mom from from your model How much time is there between? uh The previous ancestors between humans and chimps and now well, John are you sure are you sure you want to get into the answer or your timeline? What is it? I mean Right now it's looking like 7 to 13 depending on who you talk to depending on what you're looking at. Okay, cool. So the how many uh How many mutations per gen? Oh, this is cool. I actually have the math. I did this math myself Let me pull it up We have a bit of time This might be the uh might have to be the last issue that we can discuss before we go to the q&a is we have a lot of questions Yeah, so while while i'm pulling this up because john I actually covered this in a video where I performed the math myself and showed that the um The the predictions made by the the differences between the genomes is precisely predicted by evolutionary theory It was actually some very fun stuff. I'll link the actual video in the description But if memory serves it was actually in my recent, uh, I think I'm done with uh these creationists Which so so while you're while you're finding all that dr. Gard, do you think it's actually plausible that? 35 million Uh mutations can be conserved in that timeline I don't know what you mean by conserved. I'm sorry. I mean we have we have no less than 1400 novel genes that don't exist in humans that do not exist in chimps so And so I mean just saying if there's 1400 Right completely unique genes Well, they're not completely unique. They didn't they're not the novo genes that there is something called the novo gene True true the I believe these are the ones i'm referring to I believe aren't enough um the So that's point one and then in conjunction with that in terms of differences in gene expression We have in terms of our cognitive function, for example It's now it's known beyond doubt that there's many papers on this that M i and s i r n a s are Causing dramatic variations in gene expression Yes quantify quantify the expression for us do the thing that's not actually been done in the literature because that that expression Difference has not actually been quantified and here's the math for you by the way So I'm pretty sure I have a paper on this. It was between uh The indel one yeah, I saw that in that in your castle of papers indel one. Yeah, I do have to we do have to uh, I want to give a chance to Erika, I think you were pulling up some materials So I've got that so I've got pulled up and then I've got one or two more things to say And then then I'm happy to pass it on so the difference between human chimps humans and chimps Of course assuming a seven to 13 million year divergence a generation time of 25 years Which is the average for a chimp and you need 30 000 mutation or 30 million mutations So if you've got seven million times or divided by 25 times two because we're looking at dipole organisms you get Approximately five hundred sixty thousand generations the haploid mutation rate is approximately 50 mutations And you end up with five hundred and sixty thousand times 50 which equals 28 uh million mutations or Approximately 52 million mutations, which is more than appropriate given our estimates and what size said is true Actually, these aren't to know though the difference is that even when you account for expression And I've looked into this gratuitously because I study extent extant primates. That's why I'm getting my master's degree in So we I have to know comparative genomics So humans and chimpanzees humans in all of genus pan No matter how you cut it no matter which gene you're looking at whether you're looking at the x or the y chromosome So long as you're looking at the sequence identity, which what matters Which is what matters with heritability and relationship You end up with humans grouped with genus pan and the rest of the great apes in the hominoids If you are going to reasonably say that rats and mice are related or that lions and tigers are related John there is no physical way chemically genetically however you want to look at it by which you can separate humans from the hominoids Even if you're including expression because I've seen some of those indel papers recently They don't quantify it all it is is essentially saying yes There are indeed some differences in expression. Of course there are we're separate species humans aren't chimps We are closely related to chimps and to what otangelo said Okay, erica. Don't spew that standard idiotic hold on one second. I do I do have to let her finish. I do have to let her finish I do have to let her finish. All right. I hate to I hate to mute you guys Uh, you're both in the penalty box But just basically if erica had a chance or I think that erica had a last point that she was about to start if it is Related to one of the actual things that john brought up. We can cover it If it's not let's skip it And what we'll do is we do have to jump into the q&a pretty quick here. So let me know if it was Uh relevant to one of john's things that he had brought up. Otherwise, like I said, it would be best to skip it It was actually related to otangelo's opening statement, but it's very pithy Um, the the relationship between the evolution of language. I I can because again extant primates That's that's actually what I specialize in we had a whole block on the evolution of language Because as it turns out pretty much all the way up to about a five-year-old's language capacity You can map that in extant primates chimpanzees have the gestural repertoire that is Instinctively identical to what we see in in three-year-old three-year-old humans You've got Campbell's monkeys that show syntax and grammar and their vocalizations And all monkey vocalization patterns from geladas upwards. That's all your anthropoids follow zips and mensurats law Which are the base laws of all human language? So well language is something that's special to humans. I agree. We take that and dial it up to 11 This isn't something that there's this huge stop gap in as as Has been very common in conversations with with creationist and intelligent design advocates It's not that there's this huge gap and oh no. Wow scientists are floundering nine times out of 10 and I actually can't think of a One tenth so I'll just say 10 times out of 10 that I've encountered it that gap is bridged by empirical work Of hard-working scientists who have gone out there into the swamps and whatever and recorded these vocalizations Quantified them coded them into something like our studio and shown which linguistic laws they occupy and abide by And what that tells us is that all the way up into some of the dumber monkeys We're seeing usage of syntax suffixes that actually change the meaning of the word And while the vocabulary or glaries are very limited they skyrocket the second that you get up into the great apes So so At some point o'tangelo i'm done I was just gonna say I'd love to have a chat with you on the evolution of language o'tangelo because As it turns out one of my colleagues in my program actually did her thesis on the evolution of language and study gibbons so It looks like this may be a decent time to go to the q&a We all there's always got to be one side that gets the last word in these conversations and so Given that we did have o'tangelo and john start. We'll let eric have the last word on this part of the conversation Do want to say thanks everybody All of our guests. I think it would probably be good james if both parties got to say a last word I think that's only fair. I don't think john and o'tangelo have had a chance to i'm on a log First john monologue then i'm on a log and so I think they should probably i'm I'm sure sigh would be amenable to splitting whatever last word we have with with them So that they feel like they can get what they want to say into i'm not compelled to do that just because The only reason don't get me wrong. I do like everybody having a chance to respond We i'm totally open to having you guys again It's just that we do have a lot of questions and we we're already an hour and are we an hour and 45 minutes into this thing So we uh, do want to kind of move into these questions quick Want to say thanks so much for your questions folks all of our guests are linked in the description So if you want to hear more from them, you can by clicking on those links Also, hey, maybe we'll have a round two is this has been definitely there's been a lot of positive feedback And a question from mike bill ars to start the q&a ask maddox and otangelo Okay, just a friendly troll says i'm sorry for your loss next Caleb says congrats on the clear win maddox and otangelo dueling dueling friendly trolls steven steen Speaking of trolls says sigh is definitely the prettiest debater tonight channel Thanks for that steven steen and then it says channel housekeeping stuff. Thank you appreciate that We I forgot to mention that the channel housekeeping you're right steven and then mike bill ars says maddox is on his Maddox is on so hit the dislike, but erica is on so hit the like in that order We'll appreciate that these he is one of the most controversial men there. Look at him. They're stroking his beard Very he's just plotting his next move Thank you for your question Brennan says Things are too complex for me to comprehend therefore god is this Dude's whole argument. I don't well. What do you guys think otangelo and john? I'm not sure who I can't remember when they said that but Do you remember responding them because I don't know how many times I have to tell these idiots That is not the conclusion that is being raised. Oh, I don't know it could be happening Therefore it's god is literally the antithesis of the entire point that is being made I make arguments and so does otangelo in direct relation to things whether or not they are implausible In and do direct comparisons and for examples all the time of how in no other context This stuff will be considered remotely rational to think it happened without intelligent agency being the direct catalyst and Gotcha, thank you very much and uh, we do have Let's say we have some love out there. This one was from lord bryant who said tell dr. Gart. I said hi Absolutely will do hello dr. Gart on behalf of bryant and then brian Thank you Brennan thank you for your question said things are too calm Oh, we got that said only science can make specific prediction like this brilliant woman and show it to come true Seems that cannot be done with god Is that something I respond? I mean, I appreciate that if that's a compliment. I certainly appreciate it Yeah, predictions that come true are the hallmark of a good model and that's where I think intelligent design fails There are no predictions. There is no model. It's just evolution bad things look complex And that's fine if you want to say that but they're the legit folks who are out there like sci For instance trying to figure these things out and really get into the need of okay These things are really complicated. How do they come to be that way? What really is the answer? Um instead of, uh, um saying Complex, what are you gonna do? Yes? So again, uh, is embodying the atheist who doesn't Actually listen to the words that come out of my mouth because I literally just addressed that same point Just made in response to a question So apparently you weren't paying attention as you I guess I if you think I was talking about you Then you might have a bit of an ego thing because you were talking about a concept You were talking about a concept that I was just addressing You just reiterated the same concept that the person in the super chat also go to the next one So again, it's literally the question after that you're using that same response. Apparently you're not paying attention Okay, I hate to do this. We we do have to go the next one. I hate to do this We we this I I not in all fairness. I think the the uh, super chat was targeting john and otangelo So I want to give him the last word communist propagandist says Erika, how does morphology explain your huge brain? Thank you for that That's kind. I descend from a from a line of organisms with increasingly large brain cases and am no larger than anybody else living at this Same time period, but thank you. Appreciate your humility. We call her youtube's favorite daughter We always they're always happy to have erica ruben bosh says thank you for taking my question Here again for the curious my question is Is evolution pseudoscience like critical race theory? Why or why not? Silence I like it Uh, they they asked everybody they said if anybody wants to respond all four can I'm gonna pass on that one honestly Yeah, my laughter was uh, not sympathetic to the question Gotcha john otangelo we can agree I Well, I agree with dr. Gard on many things in this context. I will conduct a rarity and agree with erica We can we'll find common ground one of these days john Wow, nobody's taking a swipe. Uh, let's see. Okay. Well fair enough. Next one sigifratos arabia says Sai you said that because we find something highly improbable doesn't mean that god did it How can you? Not call it a miracle that you believe in too You believe in to sway id or divine design for the atheist scientist I'm a little confused. Oh, yeah, sigifratos arabia always likes to throw us a curve ball Sai is actually not an atheist. Uh, last time I checked. Are you still? Okay, gotcha. He knows that. Uh, I don't think that's what the question meant. Uh, oh, okay Like I need it again if it'd be helpful Yeah, I This there's some extra words there. So I don't know. Could you read it again? I Sure. Yeah, they said, uh, you've said that because we find something highly improbable doesn't mean that therefore god did it Thus how can you not call it a miracle that you believe in? Intelligent design Or divine design Oh divine design. Okay. Yeah, uh, well, oh boy, you know what? I suggest you read my book. It's all laid out there Well, it's too. I mean, that's a very complicated question My own personal beliefs and it it's kind of outside of this topic, which is evolution, you know But I I do just and and it's it's a good question because You know, it raises the question. How does a Christian who believes in god who believes in miracles? You know, and and I'm not alone. There there are thousands of us Uh, how do they deal with that with evolution? And you know, it's a complicated answer So that I guess I'm not either my book or you could read francis collins or a number of other books by evolutionary creationists Which is what I am Uh that describe how that works. Gotcha. Thanks so much and all guests are linked in the descriptions folks So encourage you to check out the description box below Kakarot says standing for truth is still claiming that genetic entropy is real Okay, well, this is like so he's this battle with standing for truth is spilled into the live chat sigifredo syrapia Uh, let's see says why is there an argument asking where the quote information came from Unquote when they're giving you an answer rather than questioning Can you explain how the information got there applying god in the process? Not true. That's four. Yeah, that's for the id folks. They're asking for a model. That's that's actually Saying, how do you apply god to the model of the origin of information? How do you create something that can can um, Okay, so constructed at us. So let's think about this premise just for just for a second conceptually um, that would be like asking Dr. Gart How he or one of his peers Came up with an idea To create something custom in their laboratory and then be like saying Because I don't know exactly what the process was that they followed to execute this It mustn't have been the result of an intelligent agent and uh, toss it over to you Syrus for a second. So I know you are familiar with Dr. Ture um, his, uh, nano car. It's 12 molecules. It was 382 pages of processes. They delineated to create this thing um If you as a chemist, I know your biochemist as a professional chemist if you looked at that Would you ever come to the conclusion if you you didn't know who he was you just came across as you were looking at it Into the appropriate technology. Um, would you ever conclude that somehow that thing just created itself? Yeah, that's a leading question of course not, uh So I I rest my case. Yeah, I I think the analogy is okay But but it it it doesn't answer erica's question, which is even if you don't know how Jim tour was able to you know Get all these synthetic steps and try them out and make them work And there's a little evolution in that too by the way I'm not a synthetic chemist as he is and he's a genius at it But I do know a little bit of chemistry and uh, you know, it it it's not just having the good idea. It's it's Trying it seeing what doesn't work Modifying that seeing something that does work and going with that which sounds very evolutionary in some ways So I think what what may be being asked though is not so much that but Let's assume there is an intelligent designer. Okay, which which I actually do. I mean I believe in God But even if I believe that God did it meaning that God created everything I still want to know how And we have answers to that we we are getting answers to how God created Excuse me, for example, you know the world stars Galaxies things I don't understand at all, but you know, there are answers to there are models in of creation And and I think it I actually do agree with erica that it it be whose intelligent design and and and and I you know, as You may have figured out I fall into the id camp when we talk about a biogenesis but my goal is to figure out not That God created life, but how did God create life? Because that's the scientific mission now. I don't know if it's going to succeed It may not it may be what you're saying is right John that we'll we can't get that we can't get there because it's understanding the mind of God is Even harder than to study the mind of jim tour okay, but We should try and And I think This question was addressed to otangelo, so I do want to not let otangelo get left out about that Um, we know it's not a problem. It's uh, but given that we've heard from I think everybody else on this question I want to at least uh, because it was addressed to otangelo. I want to give him a chat to say something said Why is there so otangelo? Did you do you remember the question? Yes, we don't know how God did it, but that doesn't mean that it is the best explanation I mean For example, if I want to make I'm a machine designer if I want to make a machine Then I sit to the drawing table. I draw it the the the measures everything it goes to the factory and it is done so we know that Intelligence can actually instantiate things in the natural world now. How that interface actually works How my mind can operate and influence my brain to give the order to my arm to move it and do things We don't know that we do not have a question in regards of that But we know that it happens So the point which Erika was making oh, but the intelligent design doesn't have a model Okay, but we know by experience that intelligence can instantiate and make blueprints and make machines and make factories and computers and transistors and tool beings and uh energy plants and all these kind of things which we see in in life in the cell So by experience, we know that it is it is possible But we do not know that unguided random events can do the same We do not have any evidence whatsoever That unguided random mechanisms can make blueprints and machines and factories We're next up stupid whore energy strikes again. She says for team i d and health in parentheses Slash psi if you've proven god is the intelligent designer or divine designer Can you explain why a perfect design designer can make so many flawed things? Yeah, i'm getting really annoyed with the standard talking points Of that we keep finding out that things that were Claimed to be examples of bad design We keep finding out that they actually had reasons behind them and From an engineering perspective that solved all those problems that just continues to keep happening and uh, I'll leave it at that famous one stuff Thank you sounds good. Just to keep moving because we do have a lot of questions Thank you very much for your question. Sigefredo Sarabia strikes again this time saying Oh, no, i'm so sorry that last question was from Sigefredo Sarabia. This one is from stupid whore energy She asked why would god use Cytosine in the code which has a predisposition to spark a mutation results in some fairly radical Substitutions in protein folds I think it's a great question. She always asks great questions that that you know kind of point to the uh The very haphazard nature of evolution Yeah, so the last time she asked that question. I responded. I actually looked it up. I'm the executor it is now, but there's actually a benefit to it And i'm drawing i forget what it exactly is i'll have to find the paper again but there's actually a whole paper on the actual benefit Of that whole process in uh, i'll have to find the paper again But I actually addressed it i'll actually get in a couple debates ago when she asked this question I actually told her because I read from the paper of why that uh, why that was and the actual beneficial that component of it But well, cytosine gets methylated and methyl cytosine is one of the major epigenetic marks when we were talking about epigenetics earlier So cytosine is not a bad nucleotide The other thing about cytosine, uh, as she probably knows is that it's very labile There's there's a lot of questions is how cytosine actually was able to to be used in early life, but uh Anyway, that that's all I can say about that got you Thank you very much and next up this one comes in from you guessed it Erica's dad nephilim 3 says otangelo and learning your logical plausible probable if I host an after show will you guys come? Yes, I will Oh snap it's on well you you guys oh Erica and sigh you guys should go crash that's that's the after show I'm hosting my own James. I'm sorry. So you are invited if you'd like to come. Um, thank you Well, I'm sorry. I'm sure that net would love to have you on his channel Well, nephilim and I have a difference in opinion as to who won the debate that we had He recently he recently claimed that he quote spanked me Oh Other connotations, I don't agree at all Sorry I think I'll pass very interesting Alan green. Thank you. I didn't know there was sign neph beef. Let's see. Okay, that's interesting Oh, I thought we had a very I thought we were at a very cordial discussion, but he was bragging uh yesterday I can just hear him just yeah, I spanked him, uh, but thank you Alan green Questions said gotta be careful what you say about me folks Oh my nephilim free uh next Alan green says maddox if jesus came out today and said evolution is real Would you give him the same arguments on why he's wrong? I'm gonna respond I'm gonna actually I'm gonna actually I'm gonna respond Um, so if jesus performed miracles directly in front of you, would you Uh, accept that he is the son of god and uh, is divine or would you consider to continue to argue that you are hallucinating? Or that god is not real Thank you very much next up appreciate your question This one comes in from slayed chimera says for christians the bible says god knit people together in the mother's womb Why would that particular god need a code tell to tell it how to do the knitting? bad theology I gotta respond to that again This is what we're dealing with on youtube at least erica in combination with erica we have and actually dr. Gardswell But the uh on the atheist side can at least have some semblance of pileable conversations stupid questions like that I mean, how do you actually take yourself seriously in terms of are you actually contemplating what it means to exist If you're gonna make comments about oh did god knit things together i mean Good grief. That's the closest thing. I've ever gotten from a compliment from you john. So thank you for that I appreciate it made my night highlighted the debate so much love and lying for jesus.org says evolutionary science has quote Consilience which is multiple independent sources converging on a strong conclusion Biology geology paleontology genetics, etc. What does intelligent design have? Yeah, I mean I I don't I don't think that's for me, but since no one jumped on it I mean, yeah, that that was the whole point of my intro is that you've got multiple fields that are independent of one another That support in ancient earth and evolutionary theory And if you want to have a problem with a bio like I I've got no real horse in that race I'm I I like talking about it kind of and I'm happy to have a chat about it But you know again, I'm talking macro evolution and specifically human evolution So yeah, that's my problem. ID doesn't make any of those predictions and and otangelo says, you know ID can say things. Yeah, but that's not the same thing as a prediction that's set up in a paper And then analytically tested like with like our studio or something where you actually have to run a real statistical analysis And and see what the kids are otangelo or john, do you have a response? Give you a chance right otangelo. Well, I responded in in in the in the conversation Erica that I think that The gene centric view is over We know that in order to make complex organisms It takes much much more information that is commonly known And science will progress to to unravel more and deeper and layers of of complexity and information And that really points to design and not to unguided events next We must go to the next one situation. Rachel Seravia says Erica does evolution explain origins 100 percent or 99 percent Um, I mean you want to talk about the origins of all modern biodiversity I would say 100 because like sai said we're dealing with a with luka the the last common ancestor of all life on earth Which is a relatively complex cell As far as once you get into the a biogenesis stuff, there's a lot of stuff We don't have figured out. I mean, I'll be the first one to say that I I don't think that that means intelligent design But that's where I come from. I find some of the stuff that's been put out compelling And I think we'll find out more or maybe we won't But none of that changes the fact that everyone here is an ape and that the earth is very old and that all life on earth Currently is related to one another by genetics, which is the only means by which we can tell heredity Um and general relationships. Gotcha. Thank you for your question. El spagetti Spiccato says is there any description of the mechanisms of quote creation? Unquote outside of the notion that quote cosmic sky daddy saying us into existence Unquote I paraphrase but that seems to be the main description of the process That's for you guys. I don't think we I mean, I'll draw I love the idiots that use the sky daddy um stupidity um Yeah, so if I use gcode and create a Program that can run a 3d printer and create something that's totally badass Um, am I a sky daddy or am I a programmer and a designer and an engineer? Oh wait, that's literally what's happening in life That's what's being expressed Thank you very much and sigafrados rabia strikes yet again saying erica. Have you seen a rabbit? Was it designed? No Gotcha. Thank you. And then next samuel lilla home. Thanks for your question said for evolutionary side Nature can code meaningful information like the trochlea or eye muscle Please explain how nature can code for independent parts with purpose systems like this I'm I'm assuming that's for psi and I um and he covered that extensively earlier in the conversation Precursor mutations are something that we've seen in the lab We we know how these kinds of things set themselves up for success And when we're dealing with macroscopic structures like for instance the eye, which is a favorite of creationists You can not only, you know, treat like a tinker around with that in a lab But you can see the various stages of that in organisms currently that gradient exists Um, which is not something that we get for every single complex structure You don't tend to have you don't always get these nice intermediates But when you look at you know, you can map out the The complexity ranging from an eye spot to a complex camera eye And something on the earth has something within that transitions and curiously enough Occasionally you can actually find these transitions in the fossil record and eye spots appear before any complex eye So psi, I'll toss it to you. Well, I would just add to that that uh, the the idea of convergence, which has become very, uh prominent in evolutionary biology and and you know talking about eyes I mean We have the same kind of eye as octopus, which is, you know, not so far distant from us in in Uh relationship, but these structures seem to evolve over and over again in different lineages So that that points to the idea that there is some kind of law That uh or laws Of biology that we don't know yet that constrain what evolution can do in certain directions And and this comes from the work of simon conway maris who's who's you know, a brilliant biologist also has to be a christian by the way And and I think that's uh, you know, it's it's it's a fascinating topic to go into but too much for now Thank you very much and nephilim free strikes yet again He says for erica and dr. Gart. How can material processes create non physical information? Algorithm algorithms and semiotics in parentheses dna unless it can Evolution is impossible explain why you believe it is possible You know, so I have my thoughts on that or they just come from the literature I mean, there's like pretty much Unfortunately some a trend that I've seen is that very frequently Folks will throw out literature that ah scientists are scrambling. They can't figure out x x is a big problem You go to the literature. There's a proposed solution. That's at least been tested with a methodology Um, and and so I don't if memory serves the semiotics stuff and and assigned meaning to to things in the code Um, it's there's mystery to it, but this whole thing isn't like this Stiny me for the entirety of of um of biology with regard to how it works and how different levels of it interact with one another But so I you you're the biochem guy. You know more about it than I do for sure Well I would just say to neville and free Please pay attention because I've said this to you many times The origin of life evolution does not describe the origin of life We don't know the mechanisms for the origin of life. We do know the mechanisms for evolution We know the biochemical mechanisms for evolution Uh, they're they're very ornate elaborate beautiful uh, and they arose With the first living cell, but evolution is not a biogenesis and by the way No animal ever turns into another animal. Okay ever in fact It's a really important part of evolutionary biology that that cannot happen Love so, you know, all of these mythical ideas about what evolution is Just, you know Please pay attention Drop them that none of that applies to what evolution is. Thank you very much. Next up. Jamie Russell says dr Gart where can or should we distinguish the appropriate place to draw the line for naturalism in our science as believers Okay, uh, so That's a great question. Um naturalism if you define naturalism as Everything can be explained through natural laws and processes Without god Then you have a problem because if you're a believer because if you're a believer You believe that god created the natural laws and processes So that means that if you in other words, I I really get tired when an atheist said We used to think says we used to think that thunder was from the gods now We know it's you know what it really is Yeah, that's true and all the scientists who come up who came up With the way the world works through natural laws We're doing it as Christians to understand how god made things happen And I just think, you know, we should extend that to life as well So it's not it's not nature or god That's not a that that's a dichotomy that's not true in my view Uh science scientists and and the practice of science Is restricted to looking at Methodological naturalism in other words, we can't use god and when we do scientific experiments We don't know how it would be nice if we did but we can't so we don't So when we looking at at how things happen In the natural world, we have to only look at quote naturalism So the papers I mentioned that I recently wrote There's no mention of god in any of them. There never is in any scientific paper But if you look between the lines, you might see him peeking out Thanks so much. Appreciate it. And then next up this one comes in from zack brandigan who says Yes, but can we all agree that pineapple does go on pizza? No, I appreciate that that person should be arrested and I don't want to hear about pineapple on pizza that that Hawaiian pizza is one of the greatest Nasty guy. Okay. Thanks Oh tantaloo. I have to hear. What do you think? Yes or no? Oh, no, I don't like it. Wow Only john appear completely switching, you know That's hilarious stupid award energy strikes one more time saying James is everyone's sky daddy, especially when he looks himself in the mirror After a hot shower. Okay nasty such a nasty lady. Okay. Thank you for that. What uh, the maverick says No, no, it's still what we'll do the maverick So they say how did single-celled organisms form huge giant huge organisms like dinosaurs? Um, that's an awesome question multi-cellularity is is a question that's been tackled by a bunch of different folks The most recent work came out last year and discussed how predation is a pressure in in only I think it was two out of the five lineages of Plumping algae that they were looking at actually spurred multi-cellularity. So these these organisms would group together Stay together and it's not a colony because when this organism reproduced that second organism began re-reproducing these cells Again, stay together. So it was the evolution of multi-cellularity. So to speak So when you know once you get the the pro to eukaryotic transition with some of work done There's some interesting work on blue green algae with with um existing bacteria that are endosymbiotic with the bacteria around them And they have their own their own cell wall still and it's all this weird stuff that I don't quite understand Because the biocom scares me. Um, but but yeah, the once you reach multi-cellularity really cool things start happening Really fast and if there's one thing that I think is really interesting when it comes to the history of life It's that multi-cellularity only happened once which is really interesting and really weird and and I think that You know, if you wanted to come out from from size perspective that would theoretically be a position where you could be like Maybe that's a directed process. Um, I don't think You know from my perspective, I don't think it's you know Impossible that it just did happen once because it's very difficult to get multi-cellularity and and um and indeed eukaryotes Um, especially once we've got the statistics to back up common ancestry like we do Um, but once it likes like I said earlier once you reach luka You're you've got a super charged organism that can can react and evolve to pretty much any environment As we can see with the biodiversity that exists today. Thanks so much Appreciate it. I I I thought their time. I'm sorry sigh No, no problem. We've got one last one we can go to silver harlow. This is for you otangelo in particular They said in your opening you said neurons need to be precisely placed. I have brain damage, but recovered function Does that not imply that neurons could be in different places? Yes, that could be I agree Gotcha, so short and sweet. Thank you very much I'm gonna respond to that one too because uh, as you'll can see from my scar from here to here I've know a little something about uh Brain stuff and it's actually rather fascinating how Our brains have the capacity for rewiring um, but it requires extraordinary technology on the nano level in order for those processes to occur and To me when you really started to get into looking at what is being Done in your brain and all alfaceted of your of your body and from a technology perspective Not just chemical reactions in the bag of chemicals crapped with your ad nauseam um, it put in my opinion puts things on a whole another uh, whole another level of consideration and Anyway, I think people very naively think that uh, a lot of this stuff can just be explained when they have zero knowledge of what's actually happening on the, uh Molecular level to make life possible Gotcha now want to say thanks so much everybody. I have big news really excited I just checked the Kickstarter Which is for that debate that you're seeing at the bottom right of your screen has just broken the halfway barrier So really exciting folks namely the debate between Dr. Michael Sturmer and inspiring philosophy believe me. We're determined. It's going to happen I'm going to be right back with a post credit scene update in particular on that in just a moment But do want to say thanks so much folks that Kickstarter is linked at the top It's pinned at the top of the chat and so really excited news that we finally broke the halfway barrier Also, want to let you know folks all of our guests Erica, dr. Gart, john and otangelo or linked in the description So if you want to hear more well, hey, what are you waiting for you can hear more You can read more and so click on those links from our guests in the description Want to say thank you so much to all four erica doctor sigh and john and otangelo for being here It's been a true pleasure to have you with us tonight. It was fun. Yeah, I I really enjoyed it I to otangelo and john I I would love to have a one-on-one conversation at some point if you'd like I want to put that out there that i'm willing and able to have that here on modern day debate at any time of Your choosing sigh. I think we agree on too much to have any kind of a substantial debate But um, but I'd love to have a conversation with you and if that's if that's any consolation I'm having an aftershow on my channel. So feel free to come drop by I'm just going to have a snack and hang out and talk to some folks in the in the chat room And I think nephron free is also having an aftershow. So go check that out too. That was my mod mode kicking in james No problemo. So thank you all four of our guests and last of all, thanks so much everybody for your questions Just for hanging out hanging out with us here at modern day debate We do hope you feel welcome no matter what walk of life you are from We're a neutral platform hosting debates on science religion and politics and we have many more juicy topics to come So thanks so much and as mentioned, I will be right back in just a few moments with updates on that Kickstarter I don't care if we have to do a car wash in january I will do that t jump steven steen and I are going to suit up for a car wash to raise the remaining funds If we have to we're going to make this one happen you guys. So we will be right back. Thanks so much Hey, james real quick before we wrap up So I want to say I want to thank dr. Gards personally for coming on to this conversation and uh For those of you who have not read it I strongly recommend his book the work of his hands scientist journey from eighties into faith Although he and I disagree on the evolutionary theory. We strongly agree on faith and and god and I strongly recommend reading his his book. It's worthwhile to you. I take time Absolutely. Well, thanks for that Absolutely and all of these guests are linked in the description folks. So check out those links Thanks so much and as mentioned, we'll be right back Folks really excited just want to give a quick update I am pumped you guys that we have just passed the halfway marker for this kick starter You guys this is going to be absolutely epic. I'm honestly thrilled. I do want to show you this really quick you guys So as you know, you probably have heard I've mentioned this numerous times that we are Basically right now Right in the middle quite literally now right in the middle of raising funds for this debate And so you might be thinking, you know, james, I don't understand. Why is it that you're doing a kick starter? Well, let me explain a couple of things one is that you guys this opens up so many opportunities for us A lot of the guests. So for example, you know, michael schermer barterman These uh, you could say like new york times bestseller types. They've got so many people saying hey, you know Come on over on this show and do this and that and so We're like, hey, it's fair workers worth their wages you say and so we're trying to say Let's raise money for these honorariums. You might be saying well, james, but what about, you know, past debates? You know, you've had, you know, super chats and ads coming in it's true That's absolutely we've already invested in this kick starter And the other thing is a lot of you don't know that a lot of the debates that we've had actually had in the past We do pay honorariums for and we don't always you could say The amount that we pay in the honorariums, we don't always get that amount back through kicks through uh Super chats and advertisements and things like that. So sometimes we do take a loss On speaking fees that we pay to guests. So for example, like I'll give you an example When we had david wood and matt dillahunty debate in person That was a thousand dollars in speaking fees and like I said, I've got no complaints. That's fair. Um That's not including the travel costs though either. So we still haven't made up for that debate in terms of With the ads and things that are running on it But we do have, you know, other debates that help us with super chats and ads that we can use to cover those costs When we do take a loss, but here's the thing. I can't It's not realistic for me to risk. Let's say honorarium like speaking fees of let's say five thousand dollars uh, basically I'm not able to risk that much so, uh For example, like let's say I spent Five thousand dollars on speaking fees. This one It's not even that much the schermer and inspire philosophy one is not that much But for future ones that we want to do if I spent five thousand dollars and we let's say only got Maybe a thousand dollars back Uh, which is that's like very few debates ever get that much back in terms of super chats and ads Um, that would be a huge loss. That's a loss that it's hard for me to take that risk And so this basically the Kickstarter allows us to take bigger risks If everybody's willing to put in three bucks to watch it live At three bucks, that's a cup of coffee, right? That's not much. So if we had a thousand people For three bucks, I mean you guys like It's like we could actually put on some huge debates So we do have a question. We have a couple questions on the Kickstarter though So, uh, let's see Uh slammer and said how is the money getting split between schermer and jones? So, um, I don't know for sure if I can like Explain how much, um I don't know I'm willing to share it because it is a Kickstarter. So, you know, since we are asking you I will be honest The goal is that a thousand dollars we have, uh, we're raising for michael schermer Then We're hoping even though it's not as much but you know, mike jones, uh, and he's not even requiring it to be honest This is because mike has helped us substantially. Mike has brought a ton of new subscribers to the channel He's he's a giver. Mike has never asked for anything And so we've never paid an honorarium to mike before so mike jones I wanted to give him I said at least 500 whether or not we're actually able to raise that I don't know. I think we can But the rest of it's going for one Kickstarter does have fees that we wanted to Include in the Kickstarter fundraising to we will be uh, we'll have to pay taxes on it And so that's something that i'm trying to include in the pricing for it as well And then the rest of it would be going pretty much to promotion And if we have extra the reason I say pretty much is because if we do have extra Then we're actually hoping to use that we're planning and we've already decided that's going to be used for future debates So traveling to for example the atheist experience studio stuff like that, but I want to say thank you so much So anyway, that's your answer though. It's that's a the total breakdown. So I I appreciate your kind words about my chin logical plausible For john nattox, um, let's see Rayward says we can get better discussions for free. Well, you know, it's true rayward I mean, we're you know, like I said, we're we're asking you if you want to watch it for free Um, or I should say if you want to watch it for three bucks, it helps make it actually possible But if you're uh, you know, you're just like, no, I don't want to give three dollars. That's ridiculous. Well, that's okay You don't have to nobody's forcing you Um, but my point is, you know, we we do appreciate that so many people have been really positive You guys I really do appreciate that a lot of people have been like, hey Even if they're not for this debate per se, they're like, I love this channel I love what you're doing. You provided Literally hundreds of debates that are free And so we appreciate that like they've said we we will give to this and they're you know In some cases people have given big bucks and so we really do appreciate that Now john smith says does this involve paywalls to future debates? No, this is This is only one so basically Um, we do plan on having others if we get big speakers But it's not like we're going to do this for like every debate from now on This is just when we try to get big speakers. I think a lot of times people don't realize It's not uncommon that big speakers. I'm not like I'm not joking. Uh So for example, like barterman $2,000 We had a generous donor who covered 80 percent of that. Um, so I I still took a loss because we didn't get that much back on the ads So the part that I pitched in for barterman's honorarium We never saw it come back through them that debate per se But we have other debates that help because those those have super chats and ads so long story short, um, if we want to have big time people then you know, yeah, it's like Many hands make light Risk you could say in other words like if everybody's willing to put in three bucks to make it possible I don't have to risk losing $4,000 on a debate. Let's say right because that's just something I can't afford to risk But if you're like, hey, man, like three dollars like, you know screw you james I want it to be all for free. Like that's okay. Um Like uh, and to be honest like seriously, I've got I'm not trying to be a jerk like, um, not everybody's like that Who disagrees but there are some people that have seemed to come off like that. Uh, let's see Ray Rard says an honorarium covers travel costs if they aren't traveling. Why can't they come on free like all of our other debaters? Ray Rard, I'm I'm sorry, but it's just not the case that All of our other debaters have come on for free I don't say it when we have so like There are some debaters that we regularly pay like $500 to get on a remote debate. So they're not traveling Um, Ray Rard, it might be new to you or like it might be you're maybe not super familiar with it, but like Honorariums are regularly given on top of travel costs. So like it's just for their time Like it's just because they have to prepare for the debate. Let's say They're spending their time like actually being there and they have a lot of demand like a lot of these guys like New York Times best sellers Um, Ray Rard, uh, one person I know of is Sam Harris. Last I had heard A friend of mine reached out to Sam and Sam Harris at that time was charging $25,000 Not including travel, uh, in hotel costs So I I do think it's probably it might be worth knowing that we've actually paid a lot of people That for remote debates where it's been free to you already, but Um flash Gordon says how can I grow a chunky cleft in my chin appreciate that It's really kind of you. I don't know if you'd really want this kind of chin. It's kind of a Some people think it's distracting, but By that I mean like a butt chin, but apostate poly. Thank you for your super chat. We do really appreciate that um, let's see Manke deems says Darn bro. I remember when you were at 15,000 subs now you're at 37,000. I know I'm pump, man I'm seriously excited about the future and that's honestly I'm stoked that we're going to hopefully get a lot of new opportunities So john w says thank you for great talks and debates really do appreciate that john w that does mean a lot seriously Excuse me Uh, let's see. But yeah, I do want to mention Our Kickstarter is linked in the description and so do want to encourage you Folks, please if you have not yet and if you're like, hey three bucks like meh Like a cup of coffee, you know If we have more people do this we know that this can be a useful strategy for the future So in other words, our goal is that uh, we basically Want to have bigger debates in person. That's another thing. It'll cost us extra money to do that when we do it Um, but that's once the restrictions are a lot less, you know crazy. Um, let's see Ray rard says, uh, I'd have I'd rather have 10 cheap debates than one overhyped person who is greedy. Yeah, I don't know if this really is. I mean like, um Most of the popular atheist speakers and a lot of the christian ones too same thing like, um, but I would say that most the people Um, that a lot of our guests would maybe want to see If we want to have them on like I wouldn't say they're greedy. I just they have a lot of opportunities um And so I don't know why you know, you're thinking people like sam harris or Um, these uh, you know, matt dillahunty or whoever like who have speaking fees like that. I've paid to I I'm just like Nah I I don't think that it's greedy so Do appreciate it and uh, let's see Appreciate your kind words steve coat who says all the maddox Uh, is a critic of maddox but says the channel is great. We do appreciate that But yeah, I would say folks think about it this way if we had three if we had let's say You know, 3 000 people each put in three dollars for a debate 3 000 people out of 30 close to 38 000 is a small it's like kind of a small percent That would be like nine thousand dollars. We could get some big time people on and I know you might be like But james no, I don't want to pay three dollars to like watch a person like that debate It's like, well, you know, it's like three dollars like if you're That bothered and ray rard. Um The costs that I'm paying are what anybody would pay You might think that I just don't see how you think that these people are greedy, but um They have to make like they're Highly coveted in terms of their speaking and things like that. And so let's see appreciate that feedback appreciate tusk beatbox your positive feedback appreciate that positivity and then Silver harlow makes a great point really do appreciate that silver says preparing for a debate takes more than the time being in the debate That's absolutely true. Like good debaters actually prepare for debates in my opinion They said and there are a few exceptions for people that can do well without any prep They said that time could be used if they're preparing for a debate That time could normally be used for researching things relevant to their main Job or book writing. Yeah, uh, that's absolutely true Like time that they would spend with us is less time that they'd be using for their other things that they might be doing So I do think it makes sense. Uh Let's see maverick says get toothiest to debate existence of the devil And get a tangelo versus matt dill hunting. Well, maybe I don't know if matt's going to be up for that But let's see appreciate your question says Things crazy monk 27 appreciate your appreciation. That means a lot And Steve coat says do a cross promotion with maddox's only fans We could you know, don't think about that Um, let's see Slammaren says that was a great one the ermine versus sheffield debate cough up some mula folks Appreciate that. Thanks for being forward slammaren. But yeah, this is the thing is like we've tried to make these affordable Um, and you guys, uh, I know that it's a very small percentage of people who are like, no Like I don't care. They shouldn't be paid that much but This is something that it's If it's three bucks for a person here, um, we've provided like Literally about four or 500 live debates Um that we've had no sort of Kickstarter fundraiser for and so Steve coat says the debates really are a great change of pace on youtube appreciate that steve and let's see Perfect one says often doing debates is at least a part of how people earn their living. That's true and so Well, yeah, let's see So, yeah, we do want to highly encourage you to consider it is we are stoked guys We're going to make it. I'm telling you Whether or not steven steen and t jump and I have to do a I don't know if you guys had seen this We were already out there. This was our uh, you know, it was a long day But you know, we put in the time it's t jump and steven steen and I at the car wash that we put on in raising funds And so to appreciate it. But yeah, I'm stoked guys. Thanks so much I saw some new people sign up just now for the Kickstarter seriously means a lot Thanks so much. We are more than halfway there folks. We're going to make it. I am seriously determined and I don't care how many how many car washes we have to put on folks We are 100 we are going to make it and it's going to be amazing you guys. I'm pumped And so that link for that Kickstarter though if you are up for it now I would encourage you That Kickstarter link is pinned at the top of the live chat and then it's also in the description box So do want to uh, ask you to consider jumping on there right now and then So ray rard says I think it's pretty duh Duh that someone should be paid a thousand bucks an hour to debate atheism The the system seems broken ray rard. Um, silver made a great point It's not just the time they're using. Well, first, it's not even an hour debate. It's oftentimes two like tonight It's it was like almost two and a half hours um But not only that It's not just even a two-hour debate The speakers are oftentimes putting in immense times of immense time of preparation Time that they could be using for their jobs and these aren't just by the way, they're not just any speakers New york times bestsellers They're they're not exactly they don't grow on trees. So like I really do Uh, I think it might be worth considering some of these other things here that you seem to It's just not it's not clear if you're noticing those things So do want you to consider it though and thanks so much that Kickstarter is linked in the description We're gonna make it folks. We're more than halfway there. We are more than halfway there We're going to make it and I believe there's going to be a big surge in the last week before the debate happens I'm seriously I believe there's going to be a huge surge of people signing up who are like, man I'm in I'm absolutely in and I believe that we're absolutely going to make that target goal And so it's going to be this by the way Is huge because this strategy if we see that it's effective Which I believe we absolutely will we are going to make it work That gives us you could say it gives us tons of opportunities It opens tons of doors on different speakers different people that we can reach out to and say hey Would you be willing to come on we could do a kickstart Kickstarter make it an affordable Uh, you could say debate from people to watch and then Get to host these big names people like Sam Harris Jordan Peterson I absolutely believe that's possible even this summer you guys i'm pumped about it I'm excited I get like my heart is just beating really fast just thinking about hosting these potentially huge debates By using this strategy, so if you want to show your support for the channel Highly encourage you to do that if you're a patreon a patreon patron You do not have to don't even worry about um Don't pledge to the kickstarter you already will be getting your uh link to watch it live just because you're a patreon patron And so we do appreciate that support that means a ton And so we do want to encourage you to actually uh not give because you're already You are already getting a link to watch it live and we really do appreciate that support so But yes We are going to turn on the strobe light after this is over and smoke a j Like not really though, but yeah, thanks so much. We really do seriously I'm I'm out you guys. I'm crazy. I don't know if I told you this I'm crazy seriously when I get obsessed and determined with something Believe me. I will work my butt off at it It took me so much work and time To get into this phd program and the phd program is tough But this channel is still growing at a huge rate and don't bet against us folks I'm telling you if you're like, oh, I hope modern day debate fails Which there are people out there like that there's plenty of haters But you know what they just motivate me more and i'm telling you don't be one of them You might as well just give up because this channel is going to grow and we're going to do huge things Believe me. They're going to be gigantic things. This channel is going to be huge. We're going to do huge events Don't bet against us. I would say folks Join in as we we're trying to run a fair deal here. I don't see why anybody would not be excited about it as we are trying to reach All these new topics all these new people from all walks of life And we're trying to do it in a way that's fair to the speakers fair to every side every tribe Every group is that everybody would get their fair shot To make their case on an equal playing field And so if you buy into that if you believe in that pledge to that kickstarter is we are pumped for the future folks So berry berry. Thanks so much for your super chat super sticker appreciate that seriously means a lot But yeah, we're pumped guys. We're excited. I'm seriously thrilled Kickstarter link is in the description or pinned at the top of the chat and thanks so much Merry Christmas. I will not see you probably until saturday. We might have a debate on saturday Um, so yes, thanks so much folks. I always love hanging out with you. Appreciate all your support Really do appreciate it and I hope you have a great rest of your night Keep sifting out the reasonable from the unreasonable. Take care everybody