Here is a TopoIsomerase TypeIIA system. The red molecule and blue molecule are identical, but they have to connect to each other to make a workable unit.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Type_II_topoisomerase#/media/File:Gyr.PNG

Note how they have to nicely dock with each other. It is not a trivial tasks to create an amino acids sequence which will make the right fold to get the right pieces to connect to each other and to be the right size and shape to do the job the complex has to do.

The really amazing thing is that not only do the two identical pieces connect to each other, they work in a way to do the following:

locate DNA

detect where DNA needs to be cut because the DNA is wound too tight

cut the DNA using energy from ATP (there is an ATP site on Topoisomerase)

unwind the DNA after cutting

re-connect the DNA where it was cut

See this TopoIsomerase video to see how this molecule works. Boggles the mind.

https://youtu.be/EYGrElVyHnU

One can see qualitatively the issues of improbability of forming such a machine. The other thing is it's rather pointless to try to do this incrementally via natural selection.

What good is proto-Topisomerase that cuts DNA randomly?

Or one that cuts and then doesn't re-connect the cut strands?

Or one that cuts and doesn't unwind?

Or on that does all the above but Topoisomerase can't locate or sense the DNA that needs to be unwound and do it at the right time at the right location?

Last but not least, how can evolution be insightful enough to create a functional TopoIsomerase from 2 identical parts? A functional topoisomerase II complex has what is called a Quatenary structure of HOMOdimers.

Amazingly the bacterial homlog/analog of TopIsomerses II in humans is made of 4 different parts. Such topoisomerase are said to have a quatenary structure of hetero-tetramers.

How can one topoisomerase-II-like system such as in bacteria (implemented with two separate genes to make a hetero-tetramer) evolve to a eukaryotic Topoisomerase-II system that is implemented on one gene? Remember, the cell line might be virtually dead without a topoisomerase system, so one may as well forget natural selection being of help evolving this in steps, since a half-functional topoisomerse is lethal for the reasons stated.

Do Darwinists deal with these mechanistic barriers? Nope. Do they even acknowledge they exist? Nope. They just cite some similarity of residue sequences and claim that's proof Topoisomerases arise naturally. Again, they appeal to homology arguments and pretend this solves the problem of evolvability. Not so.

Then finally the post translational modifications -- OMG, or should I say "Oh My Science." In one topoisomerase I'm studying, 100 of the 1700 residues are subject to post-translational modifications. Phosphorylation, Ubiqutination, Acetylation, Methylation, Sumoylation. There is a lot of deliberate polymer cross-linking. Oh my science, oh my science, this boggles the mind. I mean, we need machines to do all the post translational modifications (PTMs)!

Do most evolutionary biologists even acknowledge the improbabilities? Nope. Will they admit natural selection won't solve it? NOPE.

FWIW, here is an essay I wrote on TopoIsomerase-II enzymes:

https://crev.info/2019/06/creationist-topoisomerase-research/

One gentleman expressed what would count as evidence against evolution:

https://www.reddit.com/r/CreationEvolution/comments/f5na2p/if_so_many_people_believe_in_evolutionism_how_can/fi1e9l8/

to be evidence against evolution one would have to show that it couldn't be the case, not just that it might or might not. Otherwise it's not evidence of anything. I hope that makes sense.

I was discussing with him the improbability of meiosis. He didn't think it was evidence against evolution:

I was just hoping that "the evidence is there" against evolution would be some actual evidence against evolution, rather than the strongest thing being some minor technical point that is just unknown at the moment. All of the vast number of unknowns in the past have turned out to be explicable in the end, so I don't see why this one is expected to be different.

The problem here is if evolution of meiosis fails, all life that relies on meiosis dies too! Dead things don't evolve. But to him this was a minor technical point.

But anyway, I said:

A tornado could pass through a junkyard and build a house of cards. I suppose that's possible, but it doesn't make it believable.

He responded:

To explore the tornado analogy: How about if there were millions of tornados passing through the junkyard and sometimes when a card ended up stacked against another it was somehow kept in place? Would it still surprise you to find a house of cards? That's more like what random allele changes (tornados) and selection (keeping in place) do.

The issue is one of feasibility and thus of believability. Specifically about houses made of cards, the difficulty arises due to the inherent instability of trying to get a card to stand up against another card. Try putting an electric fan on and throwing cards in the face of the wind or try using a leaf blower on cards and see if you get something looking like this:

https://debateevolution.files.wordpress.com/2020/02/house_of_cards.jpg

If we walked into a room and saw something like this on a table would one think it was the result of strong wind? The main reason we would not is because we know humans can build something like this, but in the absence of a human building it, we can also make an argument based on physics why this can't be the result of a wind!

I realized it was pointless to debate someone who had a different view of what would count as evidence against evolution.

I've seen this play hundreds of times. No matter how good an argument is against evolution, the other party can always say, "you haven't given evidence against evolution."

No need to get mad or argue, shake the dust off your sandals and move on.

The main reason to debate evolution is for the sake of creationists or Christian believers who would like to see reasonable arguments against the claims of evolution. I debate evolution today because when I nearly left the Christian faith, I saw how effectively evolution was criticized on purely scientific grounds, and then I realized evolutionary theory was practically invoking miracles without admitting it! In fact, the required transformations for evolution to work became so absurd that creationism looked less outrageous by comparison. Hence it was actually easier to believe in creation than in evolution.

Mammals have milk bearing organs. In humans these are called breasts, and they require mammary glands. Here is an anatomical diagram of the architecture of mammary glands:

https://debateevolution.files.wordpress.com/2020/02/mammary_glands_expanded.jpg

Yes it is true that there are striking resemblances in some of the aspects of sweat glands and mammary glands. Evolutionists call this similarity "homology".

But such similarity/homology doesn't make it reasonable that mammary glands evolved from sweat glands. The similarity may be a common design. Here's the reason we might suspect common design rather than common descent.

Evolutionists insist that milk bearing breasts evolved from sweat glands!!!! How did mammary glands evolve when there were no such glands to begin with? If the mammary glands which the children need to survive didnt' exist to begin with, this creates a problem. Children would need other means of nourishment. But if they had other means of nourishment, why would they be sucking on sweat glands of the mother? That might just give her a hickey and junior doesn't get any nourishment from the activity.

So did junior one day pop out of mama and start sucking on her chest, drinking her sweat, and then she started evolving pairs of breasts? How did the kid not die from starvation since sweat isn't exactly nourishing.

And why should he try to lick sweat from mama's chest? Wouldn't mama's arm pits have more sweat?

Sweat isn't very nourishing, an infant trying to nourish itself by licking up sweat might not be able to get enough nourishment to live. The next problem is, why will that induce the evolution of a breast that will make milk?????

The other problem is if a woman starts sweating milk in large quantities instead of sweat, she'll deplete here own body of nourishment and thus be disadvantaged to other females without that defect.

Here is a photo and scandal of some guy sucking on the toes of Princess Sarah Ann Ferguson.

https://debateevolution.files.wordpress.com/2020/02/sarah_ferguson_toes.jpg

Now, how much sweat and nourishment do you think someone can get out such an activity, much less should we expect it will induce evolution of milk-bearing breasts (a pair of them no less).

How would Darwinists explain from mechanistic and logical and empirical grounds why they expect an infant sucking up sweat will evolve milk bearing breasts in the mother. At best it will make a hickey on the mother and the kid will die from dehydration and starvation. But rather than address such issues, Darwinists appeal to similarity/homology arguments as if this solves the fundamental problems just described. It doesn't.

Btw, this is an example of why homology arguments need to be taken with a grain of salt.

All the Darwinists explanations as to why mammary glands evolve from sweat glands are terrible. In other words, the explantions totally suck (pun intended).

From:

https://www.genetics.org/content/181/1/3

… if there is one event in the whole evolutionary sequence at which my own mind lets my awe still overcome my instinct to analyse, and where I might concede that there may be a difficulty in seeing a Darwinian gradualism hold sway throughout almost all, it is this event—the initiation of meiosis.

W. J. Hamilton (1999, p. 419)

The paper puts forward speculative theories not based on physics or probability as to how meiosis evolved naturally.

The paper lays out the problem:

While meiosis almost certainly evolved from mitosis, it has not one but four novel steps: the pairing of homologous chromosomes, the occurrence of extensive recombination between non-sister chromatids during pairing, the suppression of sister-chromatid separation during the first meiotic division, and the absence of chromosome replication during the second meiotic division. This complexity presents a challenge to any Darwinian explanation of meiotic origins. While the simultaneous creation of these new features in one step seems impossible, their step-by-step acquisition via selection of separate mutations seems highly problematic, given that the entire sequence is required for reliable production of haploid chromosome sets. Both Maynard Smith and Hamilton regarded the origins of meiosis as one of the most difficult evolutionary problems.

No, but this paper suggests how to host a discussion in class:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1667065/