Blood Clotting & The Case for Intelligent Design - FAS2610

SPEAKER A Right now, millions of bacteria, viruses, and pathogens are trying to invade your body. But you have an army of defenders: T-cells that hunt invaders, antibodies that tag enemies for destruction, and a 12-factor blood clotting cascade that seals breaches in seconds. Your immune system isn't just complex, it's irreducibly complex. Remove one component and the whole system fails. This is the human body's intelligent defense system. Welcome to Faith and Science. I'm Kaysie Vokurka. Joining me to discuss this topic is Dr. John Ashton. Welcome to the program, Dr. John. SPEAKER B Hello, Kaysie. SPEAKER A Dr. John has written a book called The Big Argument: Does God Exist? And in today's program, we'll be drawing on some insights from this book, and we'll actually be looking at some thoughts from chapter 5 called The Human Body: Evidence for Intelligent Design by Frank Sherwin. And in this chapter, John, the author mentions about the blood clotting cascade with 12 factors that must work in sequence. What would happen if just one of those factors was missing? SPEAKER B Yes, well, of course, it wouldn't work. SPEAKER A Okay, simple as that. SPEAKER B Well, that's right. Yeah, it's a pretty complicated system, actually. And one of the issues that we have with the blood clotting system is that we only want it to work in certain locations. We don't want it to close down and clot the whole system. SPEAKER A Yes, which can easily happen. SPEAKER B Well, well, it could, could happen if it wasn't designed properly. SPEAKER A Yes. SPEAKER B I think the main purpose of the book, of course, is to show that there must have been a supernatural creator outside our known universe system that created the universe and everything. There must be, because we see much so much evidence for design. And in particular, there's an amazing amount of evidence for design within the human body itself. And that's what Frank talks about in his chapter. He was a highly experienced biology lecturer, and he has the ability to explain things very clearly and put things together systematically. And he shows in a very powerful way why the system must have been intelligently designed. And one of, because a lot of the detractors say, well, look, it only appears to be designed, right? And this is some construct that we are having, 'cause they're trying to cling to a worldview that says, yeah, there is no creator, there is no supernatural designer of our systems. And therefore, they have to have an explanation for how everything arises due to some sort of mechanical processes. Now, as we understand, the mechanical processes involved in evolution involved chemical changes in the DNA, which we call mutations. These are random, they're not directed. Nature doesn't know what it needs. But this is one of the fascinating things. In order, when you, to understand these processes, In their minds, a lot of these scientists begin saying nature somehow learned. It's fascinating that they begin to attribute a mind to nature, right? They say nature somehow learned to develop these complex processes. Nature somehow learned to order this particular structure in this particular way, which is quite crazy. But that led to, you know, I've booked book, I just can't think of the guy's name at the moment, but on the mind and the cosmos. He was a philosopher at New York State University. I'll think of his name in a moment. But again, his argument was there's so much evidence for design out there, you know, that maybe the universe has this property. Well, of course, they're getting very close to this supernatural creator, but they don't want to admit that. The fascinating thing is that when you look at the biology textbooks, even the very latest ones that have come out since the book "The Big Argument" was published, they still haven't solved this problem of how could a complex biochemical sequential system such as the blood clotting system arise by chance random mutations? And you've gotta ask the question, you know, how many organisms died before this system set up. And we find that this system is right back through, you know, you find it in fish and amphibians and reptiles, birds, and so forth. You've got this amazing system and those, you know, backbone-type animals wouldn't survive without this system in place to prevent blood clotting. They've got blood clotting circulation system. And the fact that involves these multiple steps, these multiple sequential steps that have to happen one after the other in just the right order. If the order was got out by some random mutation, the whole system fails and the blood doesn't clot, or you're going to have a runaway system and the whole system is going to clot and close down the organism. Either way, it's a very, very delicate balance. And it's quite, quite fascinating how quickly it can can happen. You know, you skin your knees, little kid, and begins bleeding, but clots and forms very, very quickly. SPEAKER A So what I hear you saying then is like, is it even possible— like, this is just one example with the 12-step clotting process— is it even possible for a random process or random mutations to create a sequential 12-step process that has to work in all cases with all steps present. Is it even possible for a random process to even create something like that? SPEAKER B Well, that's correct. You'd have to actually have in place all the DNA code for all those sequences. And the DNA code involved in those sequences is extremely complex because there's a whole lot of micromachinery, you know, that is made. And these little nanomachines that are involved in transporting proteins. The enzymes that are involved in a number of the different steps. They're all specific proteins that have specific characteristics. SPEAKER A And they communicate with each other too, don't they? To say, oh, we need a little bit more of this factor and this factor to build this clot kind of thing. SPEAKER B Yeah, yeah. And just the systems that they can transport down the pathways that are in place, and these little machines can carry the extra proteins down. It's an unbelievable world there that's hard for our mind to understand. I think now that we know so much more about it since Darwin's time, you know, 160 years ago or whatever, it's, it's so complex. The codes are so complex for this. And this underpins all these mechanisms. You got to have the DNA code. It's got to form there to make these mechanisms. That has to form by chemical reactions that order those particular, you know, letter amino acids, we call them A, C, T, and G that we abbreviate them to, in the right order to code for the assembly of these proteins. And when we look at it, the probability of that arising is just astronomically so large that, you know, if we do the calculations, even if there were as many universes as there are particles in our known universe, and we had as, many opportunities as there are in those particles, it'd be nowhere near enough random chance mutations to produce a complete code to make such a complex system. SPEAKER A Wow. Yeah. SPEAKER B It's unbelievable. It's mind-blowing. Yeah. SPEAKER A And so, I mean, when we talk about this, we think, oh, 12 steps, you know, what is that? But you're highlighting that, hang on a minute, each of these steps has a whole detailed process just to make that step in terms of the DNA, involved in creating the building block you need for each of those steps. You know, and that happens for every step. So it's just so complicated that the random nature of the random mutation process is inadequate completely. SPEAKER B Yes, and people don't realize the dozens, hundreds often, involved of specific enzymes that are involved. And those enzymes have specific molecular structures. They're quite complex systems. It's taken us years of research to understand the, you know, the structure of these enzymes and identify them. And yet they're perfect. They're all the right molecule is there for the right function at the right time to carry out the right chemical reaction at the right rate, at the right concentration. There are so many factors involved. You know, a lot of people, you know, detractors, you know, say, oh, well, you know, I'm a chemist, so to speak. But chemistry underpins all these processes, and you've gotta have reactions that go. And we know that these reactions only go in a pre-designed, pre-existing system for them. Yes, there's so much evidence that's just pointing, it's absolutely impossible. It must have been supernaturally designed by a super creator. And we were still trying to understand these systems in deep detail. SPEAKER A Absolutely. And I mean, we've just talked only about the 12 12-step clotting factor process, right? And this is only one protective part of the body because in terms of the immune system, you've got the macrophages, you've got the T cells, the B cells, and all of the intricate— the antibodies, the intricate communications between them as well, like multiple factors in this whole big system that all works together to protect us. Each of those is gonna have a whole plethora of DNA structures and codes that's telling that what to do as well. And so it just quickly becomes overwhelming even for us to think about that complexity involved in that whole process. SPEAKER B Well, that's right. Even for someone like me to remember all the processes. Yeah. Because they fill biochemistry textbooks that are sort of— you know, 10 centimeters thick, just about. SPEAKER A Yeah. Our human mind is blown away as we consider this stuff. SPEAKER B Yes. And the biochemistry of the immune system is one of the really fascinating things. And of course, as we understand more about this, this gives us better ability to be able to try and understand autoimmune diseases, these sort of things, motor neuron disease, for example, these sort of things, things we don't have cures for now. And this is because the biochemistry has gone out of control. In terms of the immune systems in the body, right? And we don't know how we can fix it. How can we restore the proper homeostasis in these systems? And these immune systems, again, require their own homeostasis system. If they get out of balance and run out of control, we have illnesses caused by our own immune system, right? Being out of balance. And the amazing control systems that regulate that for healthy people so that we do live and have— you know, a healthy life. It's an amazing system. Now, of course, some people, you know, argue, well, you know, humans evolved from apes and this sort of thing, because they have a lot of similar systems. And we can do a lot of studies on the ape family animals to understand our own, you know, biochemistry and this sort of thing. And so they have this claim, oh, we evolved from these things. When you look at our DNA and in the fine print of the DNA, our code is quite significantly different to that of a chimp or, you know, the different ape species in so many different ways. But obviously the Creator has used systems that work across a broad range of systems. That would make sense. Yes, just like, you know, motorbikes and scooters and outboard motors and all and so forth. Have little alternators in them to recharge the battery, right? They all have that particular component. A lot of them have, you know, the similar fuel injection system or carburetor. You know, a lot of them have similar fuel pumps sort of thing. It's just adapted slightly, but it's the same principle involved. And so what we find with this evidence for intelligent design, at least from my perspective, is that this points to an amazing creator. But when we drill down into the design features, there are so many interdependent systems, right, that have to be in place at just the right concentration, at just the right time for this to work. We can know that a random blind mutation process can't— on the DNA can't produce the mutations that are gonna produce this. Instead, what we find is when we have mutations, we produce disease like autoimmune diseases. SPEAKER A Thank you for explaining that and, um, yeah, just highlighting the complexity that we're dealing with when we're talking about these systems and, and the implications of that for design that we find in creation. So thank you for sharing those thoughts. Have you ever struggled with doubts about God's existence or known someone who has? What helped you through it? Share your thoughts and stories in the comments. Your journey could inspire someone else who is searching for answers.