Michael Denton, Ph. D, M.D. (Introduction)

by David Turell , Friday, March 21, 2014, 01:03 (3690 days ago)

Why Darwin does not work. How did the red cell lose its nucleus?-"At King's the subject of my PhD thesis was the development of the red cell and it seemed to me there were aspects of red cell development which posed a severe challenge to the Darwinian framework. The red cell performs one of the most important physiological functions on earth: the carriage of oxygen to the tissues. And in mammals the nucleus is lost in the final stages of red cell development, which is a unique phenomenon. The problem that the process of enucleation poses for Darwinism is twofold: first of all, the final exclusion of the nucleus is a dramatically saltational event and quite enigmatic in terms of any sort of gradualistic explanation in terms of a succession of little adaptive Darwinian steps. Stated bluntly; how does the cell test the adaptive state of 'not having a nucleus' gradually? I mean there is no intermediate stable state between having a nucleus and not having a nucleus."-
http://successfulstudent.org/dr-michael-denton-interview/-And more:-"But the other thing that I became aware of at Kings, something that everyone working in fundamental biological research can hardly fail to see, was namely that things are getting more and more complicated every decade as our understanding increases. The endless complexification of biological systems with advancing knowledge was the subject of a recent article in Nature. At the moment we know, for instance, that the DNA comprising the genome adopts all sorts of complex shapes and forms and topologies during development. We know also that there are lots of micro RNAs involved in regulating gene expression and things like this, and every decade we find out new layers of complexity in the cell. Cells can't be infinitely complex of course, but they're very, very complex, and the complexity of regulation within them is wondrously holistic; one process influences lots of other processes and all these (other things) in turn influence everything else in the cell, so it's an astonishingly holistic system. Cells are far, far more holistic than any artifact actualized or theoretically conceived of! And of course there is the infinity of the developing brain where millions of path-finding neurons 'feel' there way through an ever-changing cellular and chemical matrix."-"But the other thing that I became aware of at Kings, something that everyone working in fundamental biological research can hardly fail to see, was namely that things are getting more and more complicated every decade as our understanding increases. The endless complexification of biological systems with advancing knowledge was the subject of a recent article in Nature. At the moment we know, for instance, that the DNA comprising the genome adopts all sorts of complex shapes and forms and topologies during development. We know also that there are lots of micro RNAs involved in regulating gene expression and things like this, and every decade we find out new layers of complexity in the cell. Cells can't be infinitely complex of course, but they're very, very complex, and the complexity of regulation within them is wondrously holistic; one process influences lots of other processes and all these (other things) in turn influence everything else in the cell, so it's an astonishingly holistic system. Cells are far, far more holistic than any artifact actualized or theoretically conceived of! And of course there is the infinity of the developing brain where millions of path-finding neurons 'feel' there way through an ever-changing cellular and chemical matrix."-"Now when you consider all these factors necessary for the generation of oxygen via photosynthesis knowing that not all organisms use oxygen implying that all these coincidences are irrelevant to the vast majority of all species (most of the biomass on the planet may well be anaerobic unicellular life occupying the hot deep biosphere in the sub surface rocks) never use oxygen, its clear that the special fitness of nature for oxygen utilization is for us."