In an ongoing dialogue with ID proponents, Rutgers University biologist Dan Stern Cardinale (aka Dr. Dan) has replied to us with a recent video, “Discovery Institute Accidentally Refutes Intelligent Design.” You really have to appreciate Dan’s even-tempered, generally constructive and precise engagement — but a thought comes to mind about his video. There are several different kinds or classes of DNA regions and Dan, despite his precision, jumps back and forth among them in a way that comes across as equivocating. To list a few:

(a) structural regions (e.g., centromeres);

(b) regulatory regions in which sequence length seems to play a regulatory role;

(c) regulatory regions in which sequence and sequence-binding seems to play an important role (in which varying degrees of sequence specificity yield varying degrees of regulation);

(d) protein coding regions for proteins that play “simple” enzymatic roles — outer superstructure plus active site in which the goal is catalysis of a chemical process (e.g., metabolism);

(e) protein coding regions for proteins that play machine-like functional roles — here shape and dynamics come into play and there is a functional context that is more complex (e.g., DNA topoisomerase);

(f) protein coding regions for protein subunits that come together physically to form larger complexes that, only when combined, have a coherent role to play in creating/maintaining some subsystem/function of the cell (e.g., the bacterial flagellum);

(g) protein coding regions for protein subunits and components that collaborate to form coherent systems that, only when working in a coordinated manner, implement some subsystem/function of the cell (e.g., DNA => mRNA => protein translation);

(h) when taken together: coding for the broader proteome reflecting a system of interacting complexes that are expressed — often in context-dependent ways — to accomplish a complex task at the organismal level (e.g., cell differentiation in multi-cellular systems leading to organs and higher-level organ systems).

The list above is in rough order of increasing complex specified information (CSI). All are functional — some (particularly the first ~3 (a)-(c)) can be attained by random sequences within available probabilistic resources and so have lower CSI. Others (particularly (d)-(h)) have far lower probabilities and higher CSI. 

What Is Dan Doing?

Given all that, what is Dan doing? He points to examples that have relatively low CSI and tries to conclude that design is falsified. It isn’t. Design isn’t the theory here that is making an “all” claim — materialistic evolution is. The onus is on Dan to show that (for example) all eight categories, (a)-(h), are attainable via naturalistic means. He hasn’t. And it is not at all obvious that examples of the formation of low CSI objects can move up the hierarchy via materialistic means to generate examples of high CSI objects.