Real Gospel or Pseudo-Gospel

Hi Mike!

BTW, I too am a chemical engineer. Interesting profession, eh?

Allow me to fill in the details, if I may.

Humans are among a handful of animals in the world who lack the ability to make their own vitamin C and must instead get it from their diet. Included in that group are all primates. Now, here is the interesting part. Vitamin C is made from a process involving four different enzymes. In humans, one of these enzymes, GLO, has been deactivated by the deletion of a single nucleotide. As it turns out, primates also have the same enzymes deactivated and when we have looked at their genomes they have the exact same nucleotide missing as in humans (Ohta and Nishikimi BBA 1472:408, 1999). The problems in the other animals that cannot make vitamin C are different than in the humans and primates. This is generally considered to be a strong indication of common descent concerning humans and the other primates.

 

Mike

I meant it more as an explanation for why he would include it on his list. I am not really trying to inject myself into this discussion, I have done that on enough related topics elsewhere on this board. But I did think I could shed some light.

I was not meaning to indict creationism so much as support common descent. I realize to you that doing one is the same as the other. As someone who is a creationist but who also recognizes that the earth is old and who no longer denies common descent, I have a different take on it. Of course, this also makes me your target.

I do not see why if would matter if all animals were vegetarians. If it mattered in the manner you implied, it would seem that all animals would lack the ability to make vitamin C. You are correct that it seems strange that a damaging mutation would spread thoughout the population, but if the diet were already varied enough to compensate, then it becomes neutral and there is no reason for it not to spread either.

I think it becomes clear that this is indeed a mutation if you look at the vitamin C machinery in whole. Animals make vitamin C through a series of four different enzymes. I think the starting material is a form of sugar, but I do not remember for sure. In humans, three of the four enzymes are correctly made. These are present but cannot be utilized properly because the remaining piece of machinery is damaged. I do not believe that these three enzymes have any other purpose. This fourth enzyme is defective. When we compare the gene for the defective enzyme with that of other animals, we find that there is a single mistake in the copy of the gene that humans have, a deletion of a single nucleotide from the gene. I do not know of any purpose this defective gene serves.

Now, if this is not really a mutation, then what purpose do the three functioning genes and the one non-functional gene serve? If they were merely junk, they would not be so close to the working machinery of other animals. It is like finding a car with a flat tire. The car does not function properly but there was obviously some purpose for it originally.

The part where the same mistake is shared by all primates is where common descent comes in. We have a copying error that is present in all members of a wide variety of species. The most simple and probable explanation is that they all inherited it from a common ancestor. Especially when the species that share the mutation can all be grouped into a single order while no species outside that order have the same mutation. The twin nested heirarchy.

I hope not to make a debate out of this, so I'll leave it at this. I have other things with which I disagree but I choose not to get into that now. I just hope this sheds some light on my some would hold that humans not manufacturing their own vitamin C is a single piece of the evidence for common descent.

Have a good weekend,

UTEOTW

 

The mutation seen in guinea pigs is different from that in primates although it affects the same gene.

A bottleneck could certainly explain why an effectively neutral mutation is present in all members of a species. What your explanation lacks is a reason why it would be present in all the different species of a given order.

The link was interesting, BTW.

 

I disagree, but enough of this. It is getting off topic.

Congratulations on getting published. Good luck.

 

Mike

I thought it was getting off topic from the way you framed the subject at the beginning of the thread. But you bring up an important topic closer to the original when you say "whenever someone tries to talk about historical and theological issues related to creation, they always get asked science questions."

If you will indulge me to try and answer why from my point of view. I do not believe that you can divorce the issue of Creation from what the evidence from Creation itself tells us about its history. They must go hand in hand. Let me try and show you what I mean and do not take it the wrong way.

If you make the strongest case possible that the Bible and Christianity are completely incompatible with an old universe, yet you can do nothing to refute the evidence for an old universe, then where are you? We handle that problem two different ways within our on minds and within our own faith. You stick to your interpretation and deny the physical evidence while I instead opt for an interpretation that allows an old universe and accept the evidence from Creation. We can go along happy, disagreeing on this but agreeing on other things.

But there is that third option out there that too many people come to. And that is that Christianity is invalid because at its core it is incompatible with what is perceived as the reality of the history of the universe. And IMHO, when the argument is put forth that the Bible is incompatible with an old earth without a very strong case for the earth actually being young, that is the end result. Some will lose their faith over it while others will never be reached for Christ over it.

And, again in my opinion, all the young earth advocates I have come across end up in that last category. They can make a pretty good argument for why we should interpret the Bible as indicating a young earth. Though not yet good enough to convince me that is the only way. But I have yet to run across those that make a good, strong scientific case for a young earth. And believe me I have tried. I started YEC and it was the ineptitude of the YEC arguments themselves that led me away from YEC and to start looking at other evidence.

So I feel the need to bring up the science for those reasons. A lot of it is that I think, as we all do, that I have staked out the correct position. Another part is that I have always enjoyed playing the devil's advocate. I really hope you are right. And by challenging what I see as very bad YEC arguments, maybe some good ones can be distilled out. Not yet, however.

We used to have a nice forum just for this but it went away. The moderators have told us to use the Other Religions/Doctrines forum at the very bottom for such discussions. There is usually something going on down there if you would like to come join us. You might bring some civility to the proceedings. This is obviously something you are both interested and knowledgeable in. I would be curious what you had to say. For instance, you said you had an appendix on thermodynamics. The standard YEC misunderstanding of the 2LOT where it is confused with disorder in the general sense was the first big kick in the pants for me from the YECers to push me away. I could knew the way we stated the second law in thermo ("It is impossible by a cyclic process to convert the heat absorbed by a system completely into work.") was completely different from what they were saying it was. I would be curious the way someone who actually understands thermo goes about it. But that is a subject for a different thread.

UTEOTW