Molecular Machines

Introduction

Well, I want to thank you for the good support you’ve given for this meeting this week. And as we begin tonight, I want to just make a few comments before we get into the lesson itself, because this is our last time together for this series. I want to make some special commendations. First of all, I want to thank the elders for inviting me to do this. I am firmly convinced that this kind of a series is needed everywhere. We live in an age when the new atheists are very evangelistic. They are trying to convert people to be atheists. Why you’d ever want to do that, I cannot imagine. But it is the case. So it is important that our younger generation and even us older folks are well informed.

So thank you for doing that. I appreciate so much the elders and their wives who serve here and want to thank them for what they do. Tony and Janelle Thigpin are champions.

Tonight, there are going to be two videos, folks, so he’s going to get his ultimate test tonight. But he and Janelle have been working hard in preparation for this series, and it takes that. And it’s great comfort to a speaker when he uses that kind of material to know there’s somebody out there who’s really with him all the way. And that’s what Tony’s been, and Janelle, too, for that matter. So I want to thank them. And again, I’ll ask you to give them special hugs, would you? Just for me, for their good work. And the preachers have worked hard getting things ready. We appreciate so much what they do and their work for you. Sean and J.R. are excellent men and devoted to the Lord’s work, and we appreciate them more than we can say.

Then I want to mention the children. We’ve had children here every night. And uh kids, I watch you, and you’re listening. Now you may fool me, but I don’t think so. And I appreciate so much the children being here, even the little ones seem to be listening very well. And I hope some of you did your manuscripts, did you? Did anybody do a manuscript? I told you you didn’t have to, so it’s okay. But I think it would be a good exercise, even if you haven’t done it yet, because I think it’s a learning experience for a family. So I’m going to encourage you to do that anyway. And I forgot to ask about the moons of Pluto last night, didn’t I? Several of them brought me the names of them later.

There’s how many kids? Five. There’s five moons of Pluto. There was one big one that we knew about, and they had discovered two others, but they discovered two new ones on that mission to Pluto that I mentioned before. So those are the specific thank yous I wanted to give. And for you who came every time, and the supportive comments and the good uh uh hospitality that you’ve shown and the times together, it’s been a joy. So thank you for all of that. So tonight we want to put a ribbon around our topic by dealing with the incomparable, amazing things that happen at the microscopic level again. So you see the topic, molecular machines evolved or designed. I have to do a little more of a side light here before we get started.

You see that picture? You are familiar with that picture, right? That’s called Earthrise. Because this is the surface of the what, class? The moon. And when they came around from behind the moon that first time, and they saw that thing, they saw an earthrise, and it was just an amazing blue object in the sky. Nobody’d ever seen it like that before. So they, of course, took pictures. I wanted to tell you, I own the original photograph that was printed of that picture. Remember coming to my house, I’ll take you to my office and show it to you. It’s in my office. And the reason I own it is because that was actually developed at the Romo Labs in St. Pete, Florida. And one of the members of the church there where I preached actually did the developing.

And the original developed picture was sent to Cape Canaveral and they rejected it. They said it wasn’t blue enough to match what was reality. So they rejected and sent the picture back. So she asked if she could have it. Forty years later, she gave it to me, wrapped in a kind of a sheet type thing. It was already deteriorating. But she gave me that treasure. And I have it in a vacuum-packed behind glass frame. So it’s very special. And you can see I use it a lot. Because it represents a breakthrough in the knowledge of mankind about the natural world. And so that’s why I like to use it. Another little piece of history there. Tonight I want to apply it to new knowledge that we’ve gained about the microscopic world in which we live.

So thank you again for being here. Let me make one other observation, because I’ve had some comments. Are you going to talk to us tonight about something we can understand? And the answer is probably not.

You don’t have to know that. You can look at a tree. Or like David, you can look at the skies and declare the glory of God. And so I understand if you don’t get a lot of this. But why this is important in my mind is God has opened up these vistas to mankind. He has provided us so much more information about his natural world. And in my mind, it’s a greater way to glorify him the more you know. So if you learn a little bit about the massive amount we’ve learned in the last hundred years, it’ll help you when you’re on your knees in the privacy of your own room to magnify the God we serve. That’s my goal. As well as to respond to some of the things that the new atheists are saying, which are dead wrong.

I want young people to know somebody’s been studying this material at the highest level and is still a strong and firm believer in God. So you don’t need to be scared of deep learning in the sciences. Alright, that’s enough of that. Let’s get at our lesson for tonight. And by the way, I haven’t had anybody complain about my talking for an hour and a half. Thank you. You can’t go over this material in just a short time class. Alright, so here’s our passage that’s the theme passage, and it’s the scriptural support for what we’re doing. I do this in church buildings because I want believers to know that it’s not inappropriate to spend most of your time talking about God’s other book. He’s written more than one book.

1. God Seen by the Things That Are Made

And this book says, for since the creation of the world, his invisible attributes are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power in Godhead. So you can see God by the things that are made. That’s what we’re looking at tonight. And you can know that he has eternal power and that he’s not part of nature. He’s supernatural. I need to make this observation also. Everybody listen carefully. Science cannot investigate God directly. It’s impossible. Science can only investigate nature. It cannot investigate the supernatural. There’s no way to do that using the methods of science. So there’s a sense in which you cannot tell whether there’s a God or not just by using science, except that you can look for evidence of things he’s left behind.

That you can do. And so you don’t throw out the whole notion of God just because you cannot investigate God directly with the sciences. No, this passage says you can see him indirectly by looking at things that are designed. And that’s what we’ve been doing, isn’t it? So tonight, class, I want to give you some of the most fantastic designs that we’ve learned about that we knew nothing about 20 years ago. And now we do. In fact, we know a little bit. And there’s still a massive amount that we don’t have a clue about. But we know enough, as mankind has in every generation, to know somebody built this. This did not come about without a designer. Okay. You remember I told you this is a course you would take in every high in every college back in the 1800s?

2. Dawkins and the Blind Watchmaker

Natural theology. And one of the most famous books was by William Paley, and we told you the story about the watchmaker, remember? And that’s a classic argument for the existence of God. I want to take you now to Richard Dawkins and how he handles that. There’s a bibliography that’s been prepared, and it’s ready for you out in the hall if you want one tonight. I include some books by evolutionists, because I think it’s the right thing to do. You need to look at both sides. This book by Richard Dawkins is a bestseller. It’s completely wrong in a number of ways. But he’s got a lot of good science in it. But it’s all wrapped up in his evolutionary worldview. So I want to read you a little bit about what he says at the beginning of this book called the Blind Watchmaker.

So I’m turning to page one of chapter one. We animals are the most complicated things in the known universe. Does that give you a clue? He lumps us with all the animals. Biology is the study of complicated things that give the appearance of having been designed for a purpose. So does he admit at the beginning of his book? You look around you, it sure looks like this was designed. Well, thank you very much for that. Then he goes on on page three to say the process by which an airliner came into existence is not fundamentally mysterious to us. Because humans built it. Would you say amen to that? Well, yeah. Duh. But what about our bodies? He says.

Agree? Were we designed on a drawing board, too? And were our parts assembled by a skilled engineer? The answer is no, says he. It is a surprising answer. And we have known and understood it only for a century or so. He claims Charles Darwin uncovered the mystery for us. On the next page, he quotes William Paley. And he says about him, the watchmaker of my title is borrowed from the famous treatise by the 18th century theologian William Paley. The personal exposition of the argument from design. Always the most influential of the arguments for the existence of a God.

He had a point to make.

Paley’s argument is made with passionate sincerity as informed by the best biological scholarship of his day, but it is wrong. Gloriously utterly wrong. The analogy between a telescope and an eye between a watch and a living organism is false. All appearance to the contrary, the only watchmaker in nature is the blind forces of physics.

There’s the quote. All appearances to the contrary, the only watchmaker in nature is the blind forces of physics, albeit deployed in a very special way. Natural selection, the blind, unconscious, automatic process, which Darwin discovered, has no purpose in mind. It has no mind. If it has a purpose, it is the blind watchmaker. And from there he spends 300 pages trying to convince you that all the things that look like they’re designed are not designed. The blind forces of physics, natural selection, acting on natural variation, produces everything you see. Now I’ve got to go to page, let’s see here, where are we?

I’ll read it to you. In his beautifully written book called The Creation, the Oxford physical chemist Peter Atkins begins. And here’s the quote from Peter Atkins. Folks, he’s a world famous physical chemist. I shall take your mind on a journey. It is a journey of comprehension, taking us to the edge of space, time, and understanding. On it, I shall argue that there is nothing that cannot be understood. That there is nothing that cannot be explained, and that everything is extraordinarily simple. A great deal of the universe does not need any explanation. Elephants, for example. Once molecules have learnt to compete and to create other molecules in their own image, elephants and things resembling elephants will in the due course be found roaming through the countryside. This is a world-famous physical chemist.

You hear what he just said. As long as you can get some molecules that can reproduce themselves, elephants will appear at some point in time. You don’t have to explain that.

And all the host of other things.

Let’s take it way back behind there. We’re going down to the molecular level tonight again.

3. Darwin’s Numerous Successive Slight Modifications

But that’s how Richard Dawkins begins the blind watchmaker, a bestseller that overwhelmed lots of folks into believing that we don’t need God. I say it’s time to revisit the argument from design. And that’s what we’ve been doing this week. Folks, if you like what you’ve heard this week and you want to hear more, ask me to come back in about five years. Because I’m going to develop a whole new series of lessons because we’re going to know so much more. Three scientific discoveries in the 20th century. We said these to you last night. The universe, space, matter, and time had a beginning, you remember. Second, the universe, our solar system and the earth are remarkably fine-tuned. We learn class that everywhere you look, things have to be good.

And the third thing is even the simplest forms of life at the biochemical level contain massive amounts of digital information being, let’s see, being produced and used to make an untold number of molecular machines and complex processes. So did we talk about information last night in the chemicals? And we did chemistry, and you learned about what kind of a substance that’s one of the major ones in human bodies you learned about. That’s right. And then there’s nucleic acids. Remember the DNA and the RNA and how those work together in an amazing way to allow you to be alive. I want to focus on those molecular machines and the complex processes that go with it. So let’s go back to Darwin. I told you that his book on the origin of species, which I have a very beaten-up copy of.

By the way, how many of you have read this book? I see two hands. This is a life-changing book for this world. Because his notion that natural selection, acting on natural varulation, can explain the origin of species. So you don’t need God. Change the world, folks. I believe this is the most influential book, second only to the Bible. I mean, the Bible’s way more influential, but this is second, I believe. Because of the impact that it’s had on every discipline. The whole world now interprets the way things work using this worldview. That’s what that’s all about from the blind watchmaker. So let’s read what Darwin says about his own position. Read it with me here. If it could be demonstrated that any complex organ existed, which could not possibly have been formed by numerous successive slight modifications, my theory would absolutely break down.

And then he tries to explain those away. And he’s pretty successful with it in the minds of most people. But that’s a critique of his own theory. If you could find an organ that could not possibly have been formed, notice carefully, class, by numerous successive, slight modifications. Look, if you’re a Darwinist, here’s what has to happen. You have something that’s fairly complex, but if you’re going to make something new, there have to be little tiny changes, successive changes over long periods of time. Darwin would say nature hates leaps.

That doesn’t happen. What he believed happened was there’s small changes in a population which add up over time to make big changes. Slight successive modifications.

I showed you one last night, the production of proteins. Remember? Roughly how many proteins does it take to build one protein? A lot.

4. The Cell: A Self-Replicating Nanoscale Robot

Because it does. There are plenty of things we could bring up. How about the cell? You know what Darwin thought a cell was? He thought it was a lump of albuminous carbon. No complexity there at all, just a lump of stuff. And could you believe that a lump could come about? Well, probably so by itself. Look what’s in the lump, folks. I mean, we know a whole lot more about the cell now than we did. It is a self-replicating nanoscale robot, as I presented to you last night. Why is that? It’s self-replicating because it can reproduce itself. I’m going to show you that tonight. That cell in your body, you know how many of those you have? Anyone want to take a guess? How many cells in your body if you’re an average size human?

Take a guess. I didn’t hear you. A million. How about somebody else? How about 30 trillion? Cells are small. Every one of those cells has the capacity to reproduce itself. Some of them do it more rapidly and more efficiently than others. It’s nanoscale because it’s very small. A nanoscale is at the one billionth of a meter level. And it’s a robot because its activities are carried out unconsciously and automatically by precision molecular machines that follow ordinary physical laws. I’m going to show you one of those tonight in vivid detail.

So what’s a molecular machine? It’s a natural device on the molecular scale, with few exceptions, made of what class? That’s pretty good. Made of what class? Proteins. Yes, able to convert chemical energy to produce linear or rotary motion, linear motion, or rotary motion, as well as controlling many biological functions. Everywhere you look inside a there’s some little machine doing something. Here’s one that we discovered early on. It’s called myoglobe, and it’s for oxygen storage in your muscles. I’m not taking time to look at that one tonight, but it has class, listen to me. It has 153 amino acids in a row. That’s a normal size protein. In fact, there’s proteins way bigger than that. And it’s a machine that helps keep the oxygen stored properly so you can breathe.

These two are really interesting. Kinesin walkers and dynine walkers. Kinesans are involved in cargo movement and cell division. We’re going to show you that in a minute. Dynines are involved in the beating of cilia and flagella and in cell division and lots of other things, as you will see. Here’s a picture of a Kinesan walker. These little guys are the Kinesian walkers. And this is a microtubule. That’s the highway along which they walk. Those little guys walk like this.

Their little feet here, you see them. If we had the time, I could tell you exactly the chemical relationships that allow them to walk. We know exactly how it works. Too much chemistry. But believe me, we know the chemistry for Kinesan walkers. You want to have some fun, kiddos? Go home tonight and ask Mama to look up the life of a Kinesian walker. And it’s a cartoon that describes how hard the Kinesan walkers do their job. They do amazing things. You see that glob right there? It weighs about a thousand times more than he does. They carry stuff. They’re cargo carriers. You got to get something in your cell from here to here, you’re gonna need a Keynesian walker.

Comparatively, yeah. I mean, that’s it’s not that big really, because relatively speaking, it carries things a whole lot bigger than itself. Yes. It’s a busy worker, and he does stuff all the time. It’s absolutely required, or you wouldn’t be alive. Okay, so now, class, this is video number one, and my video guy is ready. So here’s what we’re gonna be watching. Can you see up here who did it? Can’t see it. It’s Drew Berry. You remember I introduced him to you last night? He’s a medical animator from Australia. He’s done a lot of these. This one is about the cell division. Before I go there, though, I’ve got to give you some statistics. Let’s see, where did I put that? Okay, what you’re gonna be watching as you watch this piece right here is the process of mitosis.

Mitosis is when one cell divides into two identical daughter cells. And your body’s doing that at an amazing rate. Here are my statistics taken from the article called Humans, January 23, 2021, and it’s biologists Ron Sinder and Ron Milo of Wiseman Institute of Science in Israel. They did a sensitive study on how many things are mitoting, if that’s a word, in your body. Are you ready? How many conversions of cells by mitosis take place in your body in a day? How about 330 billion in a day? That works out to 3.8 million per second. You listening? What I’m about to show you happens 3.8 million times per second. In an average, this is for a 20 to 30 year old home human, 154 pounds, 5’7, healthy male.

Not far off for the rest of you.

Especially erythrocytes, red blood cells. Your body has to completely reestablish the red blood cell count all the time, or you’re dead. 12% are gastrointestinal epithelial cells. 1.1% are skin cells. Let me give you a count on that one. 1.1% of 330 billion is 3.63 billion per day just of skin cells. That’s 42,000 skin cells per second that are dying and dividing. Kids, take a bath. You’re losing millions of skin cells. Did you know the skin cells die and move up? The top of your skin is mostly dead skin cells. And it rubs off and it gets on stuff and it starts to smell. But the point you need to remember is that’s happening every single day. It’s not best to take a bath every week.

So here we go. Let’s first of all look at a cell divide. So this is the nuclear material. And what you’re looking at here is the chromosomes in the DNA. And you can see they’re starting to break up here, can’t you? Stop right there just a second. Whoops. That’s a bad start, Tony.

You know, his job is to get me back where we need to be when we mess up. Now that one was not me. I’m innocent of the blood of all men. Okay, Tony. I’m waiting. You want me to go forward for you? Okay. Well, that’s interesting. It’s not going. What in the world? Mine isn’t working. Okay. Boy, I don’t know what you did, but that wasn’t good. Okay, can we let me just start it again? Or did you already do it? Okay, there you go. Now let’s try to stop it again right there. Can you do it? Okay. Alright, now back where I was, class. You we’re gonna test you tonight to see if you can stay with me. In this process right here, what has already happened, class, is that the entire set of chromosomes in your DNA, of which you have 46, right?

They’ve all been copied already. This is not showing you that piece. I have another video that shows you how the DNA is copied. Class, it’s utterly amazing. That’s already happened. Okay, you with me so far? The DNA has already been copied and now it’s ready to divide. Alright, so let’s go on. So you can see the material is splitting apart here. We’re gonna keep watching it. And you see it start to separate. And then the wall starts building. Stop right there. So now you have two cells where before there was just one. And the DNA in this one is identical to the DNA in that one, as are all the other parts to that cell. And that happens all the time. That process is what I told you is so many billions every day.

Okay? Amazing. Let’s go on now. So what we’re going to do is go back and start over. Watch closely. We’re back to one cell. And now this time we’re going to focus in on one particular chromosome, this little guy right here. Okay? So stop right there just a moment. All right. Yeah, you got to be careful on this one. All right, there’s your metaphase chromosome. That’s one chromosome class. Can you see there’s already two copies of it? This one back here is behind this one. So there’s two copies of that chromosome sitting there. Can you see these little things that look like wires coming out of there? Those are the microtubules that are coming out of the sides of that thing. Now let’s focus in on it.

Go ahead. There’s two copies of your DNA. This is a particular chromosome. This same thing happens to all the chromosomes, but there’s a very important piece of this chromosome called the kinetic ore. Kinetic means active. That’s the core where the activity is. See this reddish area? It’s colored that way because that’s where a lot of the action is. And you notice the microtubules are coming out of that area, and we’re going to now focus in on that. So go ahead.

What we’re doing, class, is we’re now going down inside at the microscopic level, nano level, and we’re examining what’s going on with this animation. There’s the kinetic ore. And there’s the microtubules. And you’re going to see a blow-up of that in just a second. There you go. Stop right there. All right. Here are the microtubules, class. Those have to be built in your body. They’re constructed out of specific kind of what do you think? Protein. Thank you very much. And they are constructed by lots of other proteins here in the kinetic ore. This thing that’s a busy place. It’s building all these highways. And by the way, way over here at the other end of that highway, it’s being torn down and recycled as fast as you build.

Like any good government work, right?

If you didn’t tear down the microtubules and recycle them, folks, your claw your cells would get so clogged up you couldn’t function. So it has to happen. But those are constructed in the kinetic core, and that’s what’s going on here, among other things. Lots of other stuff happening. Go ahead now, Tony. Oh, what are you doing?

That went to the next slide.

Get me back where you are. Okay. That’s good. But now let’s go slowly. But go ahead. Alright. You can see. Can you see all the activity class? You can see that well enough, right? Lots of things going on here. It’s all colored red, and it’s eventually going to call it color green. You know why? Because that means it’s time to go. Not because it really happens. But watch, they’re turning green. Okay, stop right there, Tony. Can you see it starting to turn green? Well, that’s because everything now is in place. And by the way, there’s a special kind of that times this. So that it starts activity at the right time. And there’s a lot of protein activity going on in there that we haven’t even talked about.

Alright, so it’s time now. Let’s look at what starts happening. Go. As this thing is full-blown and ready to go into activity, and that means it’s ready to start separating. Watch this, they’re going to start seeing walkers. See these walkers going down the highway? That’s a dynean walker right there. See him with and there’s your Kinesan walker going that way. Watch this guy. You see his legs? Stop right there. This guy’s got three legs. And again, we know the chemistry of the legs of a dyne walker. And interestingly enough, dynee walkers in this in this example always go this direction. Kinesan walkers always go that direction. Canines are carrying stuff in. Dyne walkers are carrying stuff out. Can you see that glob right there? What do you think that is, class?

Proteins and some other stuff. As it’s carrying its proper load, and that’s happening at a very rapid rate. See these little blue guys here? That’s another protein that’s keeping everything stabilized to make sure that’s all can happen properly. Keep going. And of course, it’s really it happens way faster than what you’re seeing. But you get the picture.

What do you mean, instruments? Oh, can you see this? Yeah, you you can use electron microscopes to give some idea of this, but not anything like that vivid. Stop right there. We’re gonna let him get away from me if I don’t want you. All right, so we’ve gone back to the big picture now, haven’t we? What you didn’t see before is what all’s going on down in here and making all this happen. And nobody knew one thing about this 20 years ago. But now we know none of that would be happening without these machines. And have I told you about all the machines in there? No, class. I’ve told you about Kinesian walkers and dine walkers. Now, when the time is right, go. Things have all been done properly, and now it’s time to separate the chromosomes that are copies of each other, and move them out to their proper spindles.

And then you see you’re back to this. But see, that’s happening to all of those chromosomes at the same time. As they go out, and one cell becomes two cells. And class, if that didn’t happen, you’d be dead in a matter of minutes. And it’s utterly dependent on complex machines that are acting in a way that is if you’ll remember the other two words we used a lot, that is just right. Or you wouldn’t be here.

So I’ve talked to you a little bit about kinesin and dyne walkers in mentioning that thing about cilia. Dynines also help the beating of cilia. Cilia, what’s a cilia class? It’s a hair.

A hair that does this.

Forget this up here. Some of you don’t have any. Where else do you have lots of hairs? Say it again. In your lungs. You absolutely do. Critically important in your lungs. Let me show you a picture. There is the primary bronchus of your lung. Right there, you have so many hairs, that’s what it looks like. And if you don’t, what are those there for, class? They’re to help filter out stuff that has no business in your lungs. We almost lost my son because my wife and I made the mistake of feeding him a peanut and he chewed it wrong and got a, you know, coughed and he swallowed that peanut, went down in his lungs, and he got pneumonia. Those hairs are vitally important, and sometimes they don’t block big pieces of things, but they’re there for really important purposes, and smokers help destroy this stuff.

They do. Class. You know how much trouble it is to make one hair.

We know exactly the process by which cilia are built from the bottom up. I got to tell you about a couple of books. One of my favorite authors is Michael J. Behe. He wrote Darwin’s Black Box, a revolutionary book in the 96 region. He talked about things that are so complex they are irreducibly complicated and they cannot be formed by Darwinian methods. He’s written two more books. This one is called The Edge of Evolution, in which he shows mathematically that Darwinian evolution will account for some change, but not what he says. Certainly not the change of everything into all kinds of living things. And this one is Darwin devolves, not evolves, but devolves. This is his later book, and it includes the description of the cilia in this book of how it’s made.

5. The Bacterial Flagellum: The Most Efficient Machine

It’s a fascinating story, glass. I don’t have time to talk about that tonight. But every hair in your lungs and in your nose and everywhere else in your body is built. And it requires kinesian Dianine Walker’s, among other things. And all they do is wave. What I want to show you is something more important than that. And more amazing, I think. Because I want to talk about the bacterial flagellum. A flagellum is a promontory that comes off of something that rotates, that allows it to swim and move. And bacteria is one-celled organisms. Little tiny organisms. Many of them have flagellations.

And we’ve studied that on one particular bacteria more than anything else. I mean, we’ve studied this particular one more than anything else. And you’ll understand why in a minute. Have you ever heard of E. coli? What do you know about it? It’ll kill you. It’s a little bacteria. You get enough of those in you in the wrong strain, and you’re dead. Anytime food has E. coli in it, it gets thrown away. And the whole bunch gets thrown out, right? Because you don’t want to take a chance. What you don’t know, class, is there’s a strain of E. coli that you have to have in your intestines, or you’d be dead. You have to have it. There’s a strain of E. coli that you must have. And that’s why E.

coli is the most studied bacteria on the face of the earth. Because it’s both dangerous and critically important. So we’ve tried to learn everything there is to know about it. It’s been studied for years. And what I’m going to show you is just a little piece of it. And my Marilyn, who can’t be with us this week, said to remind reminded me to be sure and tell them, because the first time she heard me talk about this, she said, You lost me, sweetheart, in the first 30 seconds. Explain to people what you’re talking about. Okay, Marilyn, I’m doing that. In your intestine, while you sit there, there are millions of E. coli bacteria swimming around. I’m sorry if that’s offensive to you. But I’m talking about a very real thing that’s alive inside of your body.

It’s a part of your biome that is essential to you. So this is no small matter. And what I’m telling you is that little tiny creature, which, if you hold your thumb up and look at the thumbnail sideways, okay? Everybody do that. Hold your thumb up and look at it sideways. You see how thin it is? You could stack 1,000 E. coli bacteria across the width of that. Are you with me? Would you say it’s tiny? Yeah. But it’s swimming around in you all the time. A certain strain of it. And what I want to tell you about is how that works. Okay, so I’m telling you about a living creature who lives in you all the time. And there’s a strain of that living creature.

If he does live in you, he will kill you, even though he’s that tiny. And we don’t stand a chance against them, hardly, because there’s so many of them. But we’ve learned a lot. And we do know how to kill E. coli now. All right. This is video number two, Tony. And this one is not made by Drew Berry. This one is made by a Japanese company who spent millions tracking down exactly what I’m about to show you and putting it in video form. It’s amazing what they did. It was a whole project that took thousands of different workers working on it over a long period of time to produce what we’re about to see. And it’s the bacterial flagellum. And it’s going to be the ribbon around these lessons class.

So what I want you to be thinking right now is as I describe this to you, think of this as the invitation to be a believer in God. This did not happen without God. There’s no way. And it’s in a little tiny creature that is so tiny and insignificant you would think that we don’t need to know anything about it. Oh, yes, we do. It’s part of God’s creation that has a vital part to play in whether you live or not. And I live. Okay, I hope I got that clear so that I keep your attention. I almost feel like I need to make you stand up because some of your eyes are getting a little. So let’s do that. You stand up a minute. I want to have your wrapped attention.

Shake yourself a little bit. Because your blood does get a little sludgy when you’re sitting. And uh you get sleepy because your blood isn’t flowing fast enough. Okay. Be seated, please, and thank you for not leaving.

Okay. Now let me get ready here. Because I’ve got some statistics that I don’t keep in my head that I want to have right here in front of me as we talk. So look, Tony, we’re gonna first thing we’re gonna do is look at some live pictures of bacteria swimming in your intestine. I mean, you’re not gonna know it’s your intestine, but it’s dark and you got little things swimming in it. So that’s what we’re gonna do first. And Tony, when we get to the one, when I say stop, it’s when we get to the E. coli. So help me there, okay. So let’s get started. Uh there you go. There’s the first ones. Now these guys are pretty good. Can you see the flagella there?

They’re swimming around. They’re pretty good, but they’re nothing compared to the E. coli. They’re stop. Did you see how fast those guys were going? This is an E. coli bacteria. And do you see it looks, doesn’t it look like he’s got a bunch? E. coli can have as many as ten flagella sticking off of them. And what they do is they wrap them around each other, and when that thing whirls, it can go fast. Most of them have between four and ten flagella. And they use them in concert sometimes to make themselves move. Several things I want to tell you right there while you’re looking at that little thing. Howard Berg, Howard Bio, Harvard biophysicist, expert on E. coli, says it has the most efficient machine in the universe.

It uses almost no energy. I don’t have time tonight to tell you how it gets its energy, but it’s an acid imbalance across the motor stator, which I will show you in a minute, that produces the energy. It takes very little energy to make it do this. And its motor rotates, class, anywhere from 6,000 to 17,000 revolutions per minute. Now, if you’re not a motor person, you don’t get that. So I have some statistics here that a motor guy gave me. He loves car races. And he says the F1 cars in the biggest races, the most amazing rapid racing engines. Are you with me? They go around 15,000 RPMs, the best of them. Normal cars, their rotation is about 6,000 RPMs. This little motor in this little one-celled organism goes from 6,000 to 17,000 RPMs.

And here’s the other amazing thing. It has a device in it made of, what do you think, class? That helps stop it and restart it where it was going clockwise. It stops it and goes counterclockwise in a matter of milliseconds. And it is going the other direction almost instantaneously at the same speed.

And you know what happens when he changes that direction? It changes the direction he’s going and the way he’s swimming. And we’ve learned exactly how that works.

That’s this little guy right here. Electrical generators go 1800 RPMs up to 3600. I’m telling you, class, there isn’t a machine constructed by humans that touches topside or bottom of this one in this little one-celled organism. And nobody on earth would think that a racing motor evolved by small stages over long periods of time. By natural causes. I mean, nobody. And none of those can touch this. Let’s keep going. So now, after watching them swim a while, we’re going to turn this into a cartoon. And here’s the cartoon. Stop right there. This is the blob of the one-celled organism. It doesn’t look like that, class. That’s just a picture. But we want to picture how these flagella are attached. You see there’s one, two, three, four on this one.

This is the flagellum. There’s four of them. Can you see that it attaches to the cell wall up here? So we’re going to focus in on that now. Go ahead, Tony. And let’s watch as we close in on this. And the words are going to come up here in a minute, Tony. When it says the word hook and the word filament, we’re going to stop. Whoops. That doesn’t mean go back to the beginning. Okay, there you go. Filament. Go just a little. There, stop right there. Okay, so here is you saw the flagellum, it goes way out there. And here is the hook that connects the filament to the cell wall. See it? Class. That hook right there is critically important. Because it’s what connects what’s going on down inside here to that filament which does the work.

That is a critically important piece. And I’m going to tell you something right now because I’m afraid I’ll forget it later. That filament has exactly 120. Can you see there’s a bunch of pieces here? What do you think they are, class? That’s right. Can you see that it’s kind of a tan color? That’s because it’s a different protein than what’s down here and what’s out there. It’s a specific protein for the hook protein. And it has an exact count. It’s exactly 120 copies of that specific protein. That connects it from here to there. And there is a, what do you think? That helps time that count it.

Don’t have time. But let’s go on because the filament out there and the other is important too. But now we’re going down inside. You see the rod right there, and see all this complex? That’s called the basal body. It’s got all kinds of pieces to it. It’s got a rod going down the middle. Stop right there, please. And look at all these rings. Now they’re all different colors. Class, they aren’t that color. Why do you think they’re different colors? Because they’re different what? Proteins. Here we are again. Each of those proteins is critical for its particular function, and it is designed just for that. Matt.

Didn’t happen by some natural cause. So you’ve got the rod going up the middle. You’ve got these rings, one, two, three, four, five different rings. This ring down here, that one, and that one all have exactly 26 copies of a specific that lines up. And this protein is different than that one. And that’s different from that one. But they all are done in such a way that each does its job in its way in its time. So that’s what’s down below, and right in here is the motor that is driving that flagellum that goes like this and can immediately reverse and go like this by a chemical reaction. Okay, let’s go on and see what happens next. Stop right there. You see that this cell wall has a peptid peptidoglycan layer, that’s the middle layer.

It has the inner membrane and the outer membrane. There’s three layers to that little guy’s skin. We could talk for the next hour about his skin. It’s critically important. People talk about this as if it’s nothing. No class. The skin has to be just right. That’s right. In this little one-celled organism. And it’s so tiny. How in the world could you have a three-layer skin? And did you notice something? Can you see that there’s a thing here that’s got stops? It’s that those stops are anchored in the peptidoglycan layer in the middle here. And this only shows you a cutout. That goes all the way around. So all the way around, that’s got stops that are anchored in that middle layer. So let me just go ahead and tell you.

What’s a stator for in a motor? You know, does anybody know who makes motors or knows about motors? Every motor made by humans has a stator in it. S T A E O R. Well, this one does, yes, it helps provide the energy across that particular object for the way it rotates. But that’s not all. What else does a stator do? Anyone know? It stabilizes it. If a motor is rotating, which this one is at 17,000 revolutions per minute. It’s going to vibrate, class. That would kill that little guy in a matter of seconds. So the stator allows it to vibrate that fast and stabilizes it. Looks like a plan to me, class. Every motor built by any human of this type has a stator. Well, guess what?

All right, let’s go on. All right, I think what we’re going to do next, we’re going to show you some parts here. I think that’s yeah, there’s the stator. Stop right there just a second. That’s what I was talking about just now, class. You see it? And of course, this goes all the way around. So it helps really stabilize that thing and allow it to function at an amazing rate. Go ahead. And down here is the rotor, and that’s the actual motor that drives this rod, which drives the other. Now we’re going to start over here. Stop right there for just a second. Because I need to build a case here. Class. Almost make you want to stand up again. You can’t miss this. When that little bacteria divides by mitosis, have I just shown you what that is?

6. Built From the Bottom Up by the Cell Itself

Splits in the two daughter cells come out with the exact same material in them. Interestingly enough, when that bacteria divides, it does not have a flagellum anymore. It loses the flagellum. So we know what has to happen? It has to build a new one in both of those. Each of the new cells has to build a new flagellum. Takes about 20 minutes, I’m told. The old one is discarded and recycled. It goes away. And don’t ask me why, I don’t know. But that’s what happens. So, but what I want you to get this point, class, the new flagellum has to be built. And it is built from the bottom up by the cell itself. In other words, class, not only does this cell have the most amazing motor in the universe, says Howard Berg of Harvard, that works in an amazing way, it builds its own flagellum by itself.

Mr. Beehe in his book uses the example of building the Iacoca Tower on his college campus. Because he watched it being built. And you know, if you’re going to build a tower, where do you start, class? You dig a hole, don’t you? And you make the foundation, and you do all that piece first. Then you bring in the appropriate stuff to start building a proper foundation, hold the whole thing up. And then, I mean, I don’t need to tell you all this. Don’t you have to do it in sequence? One thing after a time, as you go all the way to the top, and you’ve got to have materials brought in, and you have to have the right combinations of things. Everything’s got to fit right.

And isn’t all that planned out before the guys ever start on the building? That’s what an architect does. So they know ahead of time and they bring in all this stuff. It’s guided by.

Yeah, it’s a lot of human protein, that’s for sure. But it’s guided by people who are intelligent and have thought it through, is it not? Nobody would think otherwise. This happens exactly the same way, only there’s no straw boss. And the workers are mostly, guess what? That’s right.

So what these Japanese, I’m calling them artists, did they designed this video to show you how this thing builds its own flagellum after it divides, because you got what’s got to happen. And they’ve done the tests on it to see that that’s what’s happening. They know this is what’s happening. All right, so here we go, Tony. All right. This is the first thing. Stop right there. That’s I don’t think I did that. Oh my. You get to see it all again, class. In a hurry. Keep going. A little more. Right there. Go ahead now. All right, try not to do that again, okay? Stop right there. Careful. Okay. This is the first piece that’s built, class. Don’t ask me why, because it’s a long answer. But this has to be built first.

It’s called the fly F. What? Yeah, protein, thank you. The fly F protein. There’s exactly 26 copies of that. That makes this kind of ring. Keep going now. Next. That’s called the MS ring. Next is the fly G protein, 26 copies in the exact location. Then the fly M and Fly N proteins combine here, 26 copies. Stop.

I’ve worked him too hard.

All right, right there, good. Alright, do you see what’s happening in the middle here? These three sets of proteins have to be formed first. That’s guided by the DNA by means of proteins to make it happen in that order in that way. Is there more to this story than I’m telling you? Yes, a whole lot. But it’s building its own flagellum from the bottom up. You got that? Say amen. Okay. Critical part of that pro that uh motor is this rod that comes up through the middle. That is a different color, so it’s a different protein that’s shoved up here through the middle. Do you see there’s holes in here the whole time? And by the way, do you see there’s a hole in that? Folks, when you get through, there’s a hole in everything.

Everything’s hollow. That’s critically important for this particular machine. It gives it more flexibility and it allows stuff to come up through the middle. Part of what this job, the job is of that rod right there is shoving proteins up that hole to be used at the top. You can’t have it all there at the same time. It has to be used as it’s needed. So the next thing that’s built is that. Go ahead and go now. There comes the rod up through the middle. And you’ll notice as it comes out there, there’s a special set of what do you think? Proteins that make a cap right there. Stop right there just a second. That cap is critically important. And you can see it’s not exactly the same shape as the rest of it.

It’s got kind of pointy places. Those things are to drill holes through that cell wall, class.

No, that’ll kill it. Alright? I want you to watch very carefully here as we let this go on now and watch as it starts to drill that hole. First of all, did you notice the staters now have already been built? That was next. We didn’t even talk about that. But let’s go. Here it comes. See it’s drilling the holes? Stop right there. Do you see that?

The Japanese didn’t help him very much, did they? This one is harder, isn’t it?

Well, this is a hard one. Everybody that’s done this, Tony, has told me this is a harder one to manipulate. So I get it. All right. Look, class, when that hole is built, constructed, made by this rod cap. If you didn’t have something happen instantly to make bushings, go ahead now. Right there. A little more. Right there. There are two very important bushings that form instantly to block up that hole. Are you remembering what we’re doing here? This is thing is building its own tower. The timing is critically important. The order of which that happens. Guess what guides all of that, class? Proteins. I have to tell you one side story here. This P ring right here has specific what? Proteins, but those proteins can’t come up through the middle of that rod.

I don’t know why, but they can’t. They have to be chaperoned to the top by another, what do you think? And it’s called a chaperone protein. That takes those particular proteins and guides them right there where they can be fitted in at exactly the right time and in the right place.

And now when that rod, when that’s finished, it dismisses it and you get a hook cap. Stop. That hook cap is specifically designed, class, as a what? Yeah. To count and time the number of elements in the hook. I told you how many, do you remember? There’s 120. Good for you. Without that hook cap, that wouldn’t happen properly. That’s a specific protein for that job. So go ahead now. It’s going to build the hook protein. And I told you, if this isn’t exactly right, it doesn’t work. So now when that’s done, this hook protein stop. That is dismissed and it’s recycled. And then it has, you see, that’s a different color? That’s a different what class? Different protein. Keep going now. And then there’s that. That’s the first hook, filament junction protein.

Second, stop right there. Different color, right? That’s another different filament junction protein that are required because the hook protein and the filament protein don’t get along. They need these intermediaries to make it work. And would it be a problem if those came in about 10 minutes earlier? It’d be a huge problem. Nothing would work. Well, where do they come from? They’re crammed up through the middle by the rod proteins. And they’re done in exactly the right order. Folks, are you getting this? I want to fall over in the floor. And intelligent people sit around and talk about, isn’t it interesting how that evolved by Darwinian evolution? Are you kidding me? And we’re not finished. Let’s keep going. Now we’ve got the junction protein. Next we’ve got to have another cap.

Stop. That’s the filament cap. There are one, two, three, four, five. Do you see that? Specific what? Proteins that have legs. Can you see the legs? That’s another cap, and this cap is specifically designed to build the entire filament. And it’s so critical in what it does, and it’s so fancy in the way it does it that it’s got Mr. Beehe. I gotta get this out here. Because he’s not only an amazing biochemist, he’s funny. He’s funny. I’ll get to the right page. There’s a whole appendix here, by the way, in this little book, The Edge of Evolution, about this whole process. If you want to just read this for good night reading, it’s really amazing. And a lot of what I’m telling you is in here.

But then he gets down here to this, he calls her the ballerina. And he gives her a name. He says the filament cap is made up of five copies of a single protein. His official name is Fly D, but I’m gonna call it twinkle toes. For comparison, remember the hemoglobin has four parts, two alpha and two beta chains. When stuck together, the five protein parts give twinkle toes a shape that might be best described as a starfish on stilts. Does that she look like starfish on stilts? Okay, I’m gonna explain to you how why he calls her twinkle toes. Because that filament class has to be built in a precise way. It’s pieces of filament what? Protein. And it has to be built so there’s a hole in the middle.

So it’s built in a structure like this. And each piece has to have its place. So there’s exactly 11 openings up there at the top where those legs are. Five legs and eleven openings. That means you got one extra opening, doesn’t it? A leftover opening. That leftover opening is where the filament comes through. But you don’t want it always to come through the same opening, do you? No. So it rotates and opens up the next one so the next filament can come through the next hole. Some of you quit listening to me. Don’t you do it? So why does he call her twinkle toes? Watch. She does this. And every time she moves that foot, she opens up the last hole. And when she opens up the next one, it opens up the next hole, and the next one comes through.

Twinkle toes is amazing. And she is a ballerina. So let’s watch a little bit. Go. See that? Can you see that? There they come. That’s that filament. It’s a different color, so it’s a different. And listen, class, that is the absolute best protein for a filament. It is right size, strength, shape, properties. Somebody designed that. And here you go. Go fast. That’s way too slow. Move it. Can you see how many different pieces there are here, class? When that filament is finished being built, it has over thirty thousand units of filament. Thank you, twinkletoes. I told you, when I get finished, I want you stupefied. If there’s any human being that in his reasonable mind can believe that came about by Darwinian evolution, natural selection, acting on natural variation by small scale changes over millions of years, you need to be submitted to a mental hospital.

Conclusion

These kinds of machines are multi-protein processes, class. How many times did I ask you about proteins? They’re multi-protein processes. Each protein is complex and suited for its function. Get that, class. Each machine is highly sophisticated, intricate, dynamic, and elegant. You remember what I told you about Dr. Tour last night? I guess that was Monday night. He said the little cars that he built are nothing compared to the things that are in nature. These machines, not only that class, get this, they are spontaneously self-assembled by the cell. I just showed you that. So not only in that little cell is there an amazing machine, but the factory that builds it is built in. It’s like having the best motor that’s ever been devised, plus the place where it was built.

And it’s all built by itself. Isn’t it amazing what Darwin did? And there are thousands of them in every living cell. We have not touched the hem of the garment glass. Thousands. And they’re all working at the same time and not bumping into each other. Which is more reasonable to explain molecular machines. They were the produced by the blind forces of physics through numerous successive slight modifications produced by random variation acted upon by natural selection. That’s this man talking. The blind watchmaker.

Natural selection, the blind unconscious, automatic process which Darwin discovered and which we now know is the explanation for the existence and apparently purposeful form of all life. Did you hear that? He’s saying, we’ve got it all figured out. Everything you see in living things is done by this. He ought to be arrested for fraud. It has no mind, it has no mind’s eye, it does not plan for the future. It has no vision, no foresight, no sight at all. If it can be said to play the role of a watchmaker in nature, it is the blind watchmaker. And that’s who did this. Or they were designed by a supremely intelligent grand designer. You tell me. Don’t answer out loud. Just tell me in your own mind.

Which of those is more reasonable for you. I’ll tell you, class, it is more reasonable than it’s ever been in the history of mankind to believe in an intelligent designer who is intelligent beyond all our imagination. And who has the capacity to do what he very well pleases when he very well pleases, and the power to carry it out. And with that, class, I leave you. I hope, more in awe of the great God we serve than you’ve ever been in your whole life. And therefore more submissive to his will. And thank you again for your wonderful attention. You’ve really been a good class. I give you an A on attention. Even if I did have to make you stand up. God bless you and thank you for the invitation to be here.