Tag: GOD’S IMAGE

Molecular Scale Robotics Build Case for Design

molecularscalerobotics

BY FAZALE RANA – DECEMBER 6, 2017

Sometimes bigger is better, and other times, not so much—particularly for scientists working in the field of nanotechnology.

Scientists and engineers working in this area are obsessed with miniaturization. And because of this obsession, they have developed techniques to manipulate matter at the molecular scale. Thanks to these advances, they can now produce novel materials (that could never be produced with macro-scale methods) with a host of applications. They also use these techniques to fabricate molecular-level devices—nanometer-sized machines—made up of complex arrangements of atoms and molecules. They hope that these machines will perform sophisticated tasks, giving researchers full control of the molecular domain.

Recently, scientists from the University of Manchester in the UK achieved a milestone in nanotechnology when they designed the first-ever molecular robot that can be deployed to build molecules in the same way that robotic arms on assembly lines manufacture automobiles.1 These molecular robots can be used to improve the efficiency of chemical reactions and make it possible for organic chemists to design synthetic routes that, up to this point, were inconceivable.

Undoubtedly, this advance will pave the way for more cost-effective, greener chemical reactions at the bench and plant scales. It will also grant organic chemists greater control over chemical reactions, paving the way for the synthesis of new types of compounds including drugs and other pharmaceutical agents.

As exciting as these prospects are, perhaps the greater significance of this research lies in the intriguing theological implications. For example, comparison of the molecular robots to the biomolecular machines in the cell—machines that carry out similar assembly-line operations—highlights the elegant designs of biochemical systems, evincing a Creator’s handiwork. This research is theologically provocative in another way. It demonstrates human exceptionalism and, by doing so, supports the biblical claim that human beings are made in the image of God.

Molecular Robotics

University of Manchester chemists built molecular robots that consist of about 150 atoms of carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, and hydrogen. Though these robots consist of a relatively small number of atoms, the arrangement of these atoms makes the molecular robots structurally complex.

The robots’ architecture is organized around a molecular-scale platform. Located in the middle of the platform is a molecular arm that extends upward and then bends at a 90-degree angle. This molecular prosthesis binds molecules at the end of the arm and then can be made to swivel between the two ends of the platform as researchers add different chemicals to the reaction. The swiveling action brings the bound molecule in juxtaposition to the chemical groups at the tip ends of the platform. When reactants are added to the solution, these compounds will react with the bound molecule differently depending on the placement of the arm, whether it is oriented toward one end of the platform or the other. In this way, the bound molecule—call it A—can react through two cycles of arm placement to form one of four possible compounds—B, C, D, and E. In this scheme, unwanted side reactions are kept to a minimum, because the bound molecule is precisely positioned next to either of the two ends of the molecular platform. This specificity improves the reaction efficiency, while at the same time making it possible for chemists to generate compounds that would be impossible to synthesize without the specificity granted by the molecular robots.

Molecular Robots Make the Case for Design

Many researchers working in nanotechnology did not think that the University of Manchester scientists—or any scientists, for that matter—could design and build a molecular robot that could carry out high precision molecular assembly. In the abstract of their paper, the Manchester team writes, “It has been convincingly argued that molecular machines that manipulate individual atoms, or highly reactive clusters of atoms, with Ångstrom precision are unlikely to be realized.”2

Yet, the researchers were motivated to try to achieve this goal because molecular machines with this capacity exist inside the cell. They continue, “However, biological molecular machines routinely position rather less reactive substrates in order to direct chemical reaction sequences.”3 To put it another way, the Manchester chemists derived insight and inspiration from the biomolecular machines inside the cell to design and build their molecular robot.

As I have written about before, the use of designs in biochemistry to inspire advances in nanotechnology make possible a new design argument, one I call the converse watchmaker argument. Namely, if biological designs are the work of a Creator, these systems should be so well-designed that they can serve as engineering models and otherwise inspire the development of new technologies.

Comparison of the molecular robots designed by the University of Manchester team with a typical biomolecular machine found in the cell illustrates this point. The newly synthesized molecular robot consists of around 150 atoms, yet it took an enormous amount of ingenuity and effort to design and make. Still, this molecular machine is far less efficient than the biomolecular machines found in the cell. The cell’s biomolecular machines consist of thousands of atoms and are much more elegant and sophisticated than the man-made molecular robots. Considering these differences, is it reasonable to think that the biomolecular machines in the cell resulted from unguided, undirected, contingent processes when they are so much more advanced than the molecular robots built by scientists—some of them among the best chemists in the world?

The only reasonable explanation is that the biomolecular machines in the cell stem from the work of a mind—a divine mind with unlimited creative capacity.

Molecular Robots Make the Case for Human Exceptionalism

Though unimpressive when compared to the elegant biomolecular machines in the cell, molecular robots still stand as a noteworthy scientific accomplishment—one might even say they represent science at its very best. And this accomplishment stresses the fact that human beings are the only species that has ever existed that can create technologies as advanced as the molecular robots invented by the University of Manchester chemists. Our capacity to investigate and understand nature through science and then turn that insight into technologies is unique to human beings. No other creature that exists today or that has ever existed, possesses this capability.

Thomas Suddendorf puts it this way:

“We reflect on and argue about our present situation, our history, and our destiny. We envision wonderful harmonious worlds as easily as we do dreadful tyrannies. Our powers are used for good as they are for bad, and we incessantly debate which is which. Our minds have spawned civilizations and technologies that have changed the face of the Earth, while our closest living animal relatives sit unobtrusively in their remaining forests. There appears to be a tremendous gap between human and animal minds.”4

Anthropologists believe that symbolism accounts for the gap between humans and the great apes. As human beings, we effortlessly represent the world with discrete symbols. We denote abstract concepts with symbols. And our ability to represent the world symbolically has interesting consequences when coupled with our abilities to combine and recombine those symbols in a nearly infinite number of ways to create alternate possibilities.

Our capacity for symbolism manifests in the form of language, art, music, and even body ornamentation. And we desire to communicate the scenarios we construct in our minds with other human beings. In a sense, symbolism and our open-ended capacity to generate alternative hypotheses are scientific descriptors of the image of God.

There also appears to be a gap between human minds and the minds of the hominins, such as Neanderthals, who preceded us in the fossil record. It is true: claims abound about Neanderthals possessing the capacity for symbolism. Yet, as I discuss in Who Was Adam, those claims do not withstand scientific scrutiny. Recently, paleoanthropologist Ian Tattersall and linguist Noam Chomsky (along with other collaborators) argued that Neanderthals could not have possessed language and, hence, symbolism, because their crude “technology” remained stagnant for the duration of their time on Earth. Neanderthals—who first appear in the fossil record around 250,000 to 200,000 years ago and disappear around 40,000 years ago—existed on Earth longer than modern humans have. Yet, our technology has progressed exponentially, while Neanderthal technology remained largely static. According to Tattersall, Chomsky, and their coauthors:

“Our species was born in a technologically archaic context, and significantly, the tempo of change only began picking up after the point at which symbolic objects appeared. Evidently, a new potential for symbolic thought was born with our anatomically distinctive species, but it was only expressed after a necessary cultural stimulus had exerted itself. This stimulus was most plausibly the appearance of language. . . . Then, within a remarkably short space of time, art was invented, cities were born, and people had reached the moon.”5

In effect, these researchers echo Suddendorf’s point. The gap between human beings and the great apes and hominins becomes most apparent when we consider the remarkable technological advances we have made during our tenure as a species. And this mind-boggling growth in technology points to our exceptionalism as a species, affirming the biblical view that, as human beings, we uniquely bear God’s image.

Resources to Dig Deeper

Endnotes

  1. Salma Kassem et al., “Stereodivergent Synthesis with a Programmable Molecular Machine,” Nature 549 (September 21, 2017): 374–8, doi:10.1038/nature23677.
  2. Kassem et al., “Stereodivergent Synthesis,” 374.
  3. Kassem et al., “Stereodivergent Synthesis,” 374.
  4. Thomas Suddendorf, The Gap: The Science of What Separates Us from Other Animals (New York: Basic Books, 2013), 2.
  5. Johan J. Bolhuis et al., “How Could Language Have Evolved?” PLoS Biology 12 (August 26, 2014): e1001934, doi:10.1371/journal.pbio.1001934.
Reprinted with permission by the author
Original article at:
https://www.reasons.org/explore/blogs/the-cells-design/read/the-cells-design/2017/12/06/molecular-scale-robotics-build-case-for-design

Were Neanderthals People, Too? A Response to Jon Mooallem

neanderthalspeopletoo

BY FAZALE RANA – FEBRUARY 8, 2017

Recently, I conducted an informal survey through my Facebook page, asking my friends, “What do you think is the most significant scientific challenge to the Christian faith?”

The most consistent concern related to Neanderthals. Why did God create these creatures (and other hominids)? How do we make sense of human-Neanderthal interbreeding? What about Neanderthal behavior? Didn’t these creatures behave just like us?

These questions are understandable. And they are reinforced by popular science articles such as the piece by Jon Mooallem published recently (January 11, 2017) in the New York Times Magazine. In this piece, Mooallem interviews paleoanthropologist Clive Finlayson about his research at Gorham’s Cave (Gibraltar)—work that Finlayson claims provides evidence that Neanderthals possessed advanced cognitive abilities, just like modern humans—just like us.1

Finlayson’s team discovered hatch marks made in the bedrock of Gorham’s Cave. They age-date the markings to be more than 39,000 years old. The layer immediately above the bedrock dated between 30,000 and 38,000 years old and contained Neanderthal-produced artifacts, leading the team to conclude that these hominids made the markings, and the hatch marks represent some form of proto-art.2

In his piece, Mooallem cites other recent scientific claims that support Finlayson’s interpretation of Neanderthal behavioral capacity. Based on archaeological and fossil finds, some paleoanthropologists argue that these hominids: (1) buried their dead, (2) made specialized tools, (3) used ochre, (4) produced jewelry, and (5) even had language capacities.

This view of Neanderthals stands as a direct challenge to the view espoused by the RTB human origins model, specifically the notion of human exceptionalism and the biblical view that humans alone bear the image of God.

Mooallem argues that paleoanthropologists have been slow to acknowledge the sophisticated behavior of Neanderthals because of a bias that reflects the earliest views about these creatures—a view that regards these hominids as “unintelligent brutes.” Accordingly, this view has colored the way paleoanthropologists interpret archaeological finds associated with Neanderthals, keeping them from seeing the obvious: Neanderthals had sophisticated cognitive abilities. In fact, Mooallem accuses paleoanthropologists who continue to reject this new view of Neanderthals as being “modern human supremacists,” guilty of speciesism, born out of an “anti-Neanderthal prejudice.”

Mooallem offers a reason why this prejudice continues to persist among some paleoanthropologists. In part, it’s because of the limited data available to them from the archaeological record. In the absence of a robust data set, paleoanthropologists must rely on speculation fueled by preconceptions. Mooallem states,“

All sciences operate by trying to fit new data into existing theories. And this particular science, for which the ‘data’ has always consisted of scant and somewhat inscrutable bits of rock and fossil, often has to lean on those meta-narratives even more heavily. . . . Ultimately, a bottomless relativism can creep in: tenuous interpretations held up by webs of other interpretations, each strung from still more interpretations. Almost every archaeologist I interviewed complained that the field has become ‘overinterpreted’—that the ratio of physical evidence to speculation about that evidence is out of whack. Good stories can generate their own momentum.”3

Yet, as discussed in my book Who Was Adam? (and articles listed below in the Resources section), careful examination of the archaeological and fossil evidence reveals just how speculative the claims about Neanderthal “exceptionalism” are. Could it be that the claims of Neanderthal art and religion result from an overinterpreted archaeological record, and not the other way around?

In effect, Mooallem’s critique of the “modern human supremacists” cuts both ways. In light of the limited and incomplete data from the archaeological record, it could be inferred that paleoanthropologists who claim Neanderthals have sophisticated cognitive capacities, just like modern humans, have their own prejudices fueled by an “anti-modern human bias” and a speciesism all their own—a bias that seeks to undermine the uniqueness and exceptionalism of modern humans. And to do this they must make Neanderthals out to be just like us.

As to the question: Why did God create these creatures (and the other hominids)? That will have to wait for another post. So stay tuned…

Resources

Endnotes

  1. Jon Mooallem, “Neanderthals Were People, Too,” New York Times Magazine, January 11, 2017, https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/11/magazine/neanderthals-were-people-too.html.
  2. Joaquín Rodríguez-Vidal et al., “A Rock Engraving Made by Neanderthals in Gibraltar,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, USA 111 (September 2014): 13301–6, doi:10.1073/pnas.1411529111.
  3. Mooallem, “Neanderthals Were People.”
Reprinted with permission by the author
Original article at:
https://reasons.org/explore/blogs/the-cells-design/read/the-cells-design/2017/02/08/were-neanderthals-people-too-a-response-to-jon-mooallem