Welcome to Defenders, the teaching class of Dr. William Lane Craig.

Today, the creation of life and biological diversity, part 33.

For more information and resources from Dr. Craig, go to reasonable faith.org.

We've been looking at the adequacy of the Neo-Darwinian mechanisms of random mutation and natural selection

to draw the extraordinary extrapolation from local effects such as finch beaks and peppered moths to the evolution of all life on earth from a common ancestor.

And we looked at the experience of both breeders as well as the peppered moth experiments

and then turned to the question of drug resistance

in microorganisms as a result of random mutations. And you'll recall that Michael Behe

looks at malaria as a counter-example to this claim. Malaria mutates at a tremendously rapid

rate and as a result it's been able to overcome every drug that we've developed against it.

But the human respiratory system has also mutated and developed something that malaria has not been able to overcome, namely sickle hemoglobin.

And the reason that malaria can overcome drugs and poisons is because in order to do so relatively simple

mutations need to occur.

But according to Behe, in order to overcome sickle hemoglobin, you would need to have multiple

mutations either occurring simultaneously or blindly step by step, and this is simply too

improbable to happen.

And therefore, despite trillions of cells and tens of thousands of generations, malaria has never

been able to mutate enough to overcome sickle hemoglobin.

B. He looks at HIV as another case study. HIV mutates 10,000 times faster than malaria.

In the last 50 years alone, the AIDS virus has mutated as much as all the cells that have ever

existed on this planet in just 50 years. It has tried out every possible combination of up to six-point

simultaneous mutations and thus has become resistant to every drug that we've developed.

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