Evolution or Creation?
Cells and DNA
In Darwin's time, scientists thought cells were just blobs of protoplasm.[79] Since that time the advance of science has uncovered ever more powerful evidence that what Christians believe is true on all levels, including the natural world. And that is becoming even clearer today as scientists learn more about what is inside the cell-and especially the structure of DNA.[45]
According to cell biologist Bruce Alberts, president of the National Academy of Sciences, "The entire cell can be viewed as a factory that contains an elaborate network of interlocking assembly lines, each of which is composed of a set of large protein machines."[79]
Even the simplest cells are bristling with high-tech machinery. On the outside, their surfaces are studded with sensors, gates, pumps and identification markers.[79]
Inside, cells are jam-packed with power plants, automated workshops and recycling units. Miniature monorails whisk materials from one location to another. No such system could arise in a blind, step-by-step Darwinian process.[79]
The most advanced, automated modern factory, with its computers and robots all coordinated on a precisely timed schedule, is less complex than the inner workings of a single cell.[15]
"A bacterium is far more complex than any inanimate system known to man. There is not a laboratory in the world which can compete with the biochemical activity of the smallest living organism. One cell is more complicated than the largest computer that man has ever made." - Sir James Gray, from Cambridge University
DNA is like a language in the heart of the cell, a molecular message, a set of instructions telling the cell how to construct proteins-much like the software needed to run a computer. Moreover, the amount of information DNA includes is staggering: A single cell of the human body contains three or four times more information as all 30 volumes of the Encyclopedia Britannica. As a result, the question of the origin of life must now be redefined as the question of the origin of biological information. Can information arise by natural forces alone? Or does it require an intelligent agent?[45]
DNA is composed of ordinary chemicals (bases, sugars, phosphates that react according to ordinary laws. What makes DNA function as a message is not the chemicals themselves but rather their sequence, their pattern. The chemicals in DNA are grouped into molecules (called nucleotides) that act like letters in a message, and they must be in a particular order if the message is going to be intelligible. If the letters are scrambled, the result is nonsense. So the crucial question is whether the sequence of chemical "letters" arose by natural causes or whether it required an intelligent source. Is it the product of law or design?[45]
Since DNA contains information, the case can be stated even more strongly in terms of information theory, a field of research that investigates the ways information is transmitted. The naturalistic scientist has only two possible ways to explain the origin of life-either chance or natural law. But information theory provides a powerful tool for discounting both of these explanations. Both chance and law lead to structures with low information content, whereas DNA has a very high information content."[45]
The sequence of basis in DNA can not be explained by natural law because there are no chemical laws that make any sequence more likely than another. At the same time these sequences are so complicated that they can not be explained by chance.[29]
"Based on probability factors . . any viable DNA strand having over 84 nucleotides cannot be the result of haphazard mutations. At that stage, the probabilities are 1 in 4.80 x 10[[50]]. Such a number, if written out, would read:
480,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000.
"Mathematicians agree that any requisite number beyond 10[50] has, statistically, a zero probability of occurrence (and even that gives it the benefit of the doubt!). Any species known to us, including the smallest single-cell bacteria, have enormously larger number of nucleotides than 100 or 1000. In fact, single cell bacteria display about 3,000,000 nucleotides, aligned in a very specific sequence. This means that there is no mathematical probability whatever for any known species to have been the product of a random occurrence—random mutations (to use the evolutionist's favorite expression)."—I. L. Cohen, Darwin was Wrong, 1984, p. 205.[67]
The study of DNA provides powerful new evidence that life is the product of intelligent design.[45]
New study finds DNA more complex than originally thought
Today, holding on to the hope that some natural process will be found to explain DNA is supremely irrational. The elusive process that naturalists hope to find would have to be completely unprecedented, different in kind from any we currently know.[45]
Although humans share about 97% of their DNA structure with some higher non-human animals, those last 3% are so vital that all of human civilization, religion, art, science, philosophy and, most importantly, their moral nature depends upon it.[30]
It is the 3% that distinguishes the theistic view of man's origin from the non-theistic view, as well as from the various societal and cultural consequences distinguishing each belief. As John Quincy Adams warned long ago, without a belief in theistic origins [in that three percent difference] man will have no conscience. He will have no other law than that of the tiger and the shark."[30]
ON ALL FRONTS, scientists are being forced to face up to the evidence for an intelligent cause. Ever since big bang theory was proposed, cosmologists have had to wrestle with the implications that the universe had an absolute beginning-and therefore a transcendent creator. The discovery of the information content in DNA is forcing biologists to recognize an intelligent cause for the origin of life. So, too, the fact of irreducible complexity is raising the question of design in living things.[15]