Let’s talk about your digits. No, not your phone number – your fingers and toes, those dangling things on the ends of our hands and feet! Ever wondered how they form during embryonic development? On this ID The Future, host Andrew McDiarmid welcomes back Dr. Jonathan McLatchie to discuss the incredible process of apoptosis that shapes our fingers and toes, and why the operation is better explained by intelligent design than a stepwise evolutionary process.
Apoptosis is actually a precise form of programmed cell death. During early development, the hands and feet begin as solid, webbed structures. Through carefully controlled apoptosis, the tissue between them is eliminated, facilitating the separation of the digits. The role of apoptosis can be compared with the work of a stone sculptor who shapes stone by chipping off small fragments from a crude block, eventually creating a form. But how could such a developmental process involving programmed cell death evolve in a gradual, incremental fashion without awareness of the target, or a way to keep the death program in check?
On today’s ID the Future out of the vault, Stairway to Life co-author Rob Stadler and host Eric Anderson delve deeper into Challenge to Origin of Life: Energy Harnessing, an episode of the Long Story Short intelligent design video series. Could the first cell have been much simpler than any current cell, making it easier for it to emerge through blind natural forces on the early Earth? Stadler and Anderson surface one big problem with that idea: in experiments to make relatively simple cells even simpler, the cells inevitably become less robust and adaptable. These simpler cells must be coddled to survive. But the first cell on earth would have been anything but coddled. Tune in to learn more!
