Early Earth Enigmas (Part 6)

Divinely designed DNA?

When the cell of a bacterium divides, it becomes two bacteria, not two amoebae. Apple trees bear apples, not oranges. A smooth-coated Siamese cat cannot give birth to thick-furred Persian kittens, although they belong to the same feline family. All living species, as well as varieties within them, stay the same from one generation to the next.

The Creator had apparently intended it to be that way from the very beginning: “And God said, Let the earth bring forth the living creature after his kind, cattle, and creeping thing, and beast of the earth after his kind: and it was so” (Gen 1:24).

Physically responsible for this biological order is a chemical molecule called deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA), which forms part of threadlike chromosomes inside all living cells (except red blood cells and some viruses). In the form of two intertwined chains in a double helix (spiral), like a twisted ladder, each DNA comprises thousands of encoded genes that govern heredity, the transmission of physical characteristics from parent to offspring.

 

“Chicken or egg” paradox.

Proteins depend on DNA for their formation. Yet, DNA cannot form without pre-existing protein. Which came first?

Chemistry lecturer John C. Walton further lamented: “The origin of the genetic code presents formidable unsolved problems. The coded information in the nucleotide sequence is meaningless without the translation machinery, but the specification for this machinery is itself coded in the DNA. Thus without the machinery the information is meaningless, but without the coded information the machinery cannot be produced! This presents a paradox of the ‘chicken and egg’ variety, and attempts to solve it have so far been sterile.”⁹⁴

 

Stored genetic information.

DNA is stored information written in a genetic language with a four-letter (nucleotide) alphabet and grammatical rules, telling the cells how to function and reproduce. Despite having only four letters, through their various combinations DNA is able to maintain the distinctions not only among all species, but also between individuals of each species. The language components in the human gene are identical to that of other organisms, say, a snail. Only the sequence is different.⁹⁵

One of the tiniest one-celled organisms is the bacterium R. coli. Scientists estimate it has about 2,000 genes, with some 1,000 enzymes each. Every enzyme contains roughly one billion nucleotides or letters of the chemical alphabet, comparable to bytes in computer language.

Physicist Jonathan Sarfati reckons that the “amount of information that could be stored in a pinhead’s volume of DNA is equivalent to a pile of paperback books 500 times as high as the distance from Earth to the moon, each with a different, yet specific content. Putting it another way, while we think that our new 40 gigabyte hard drives are advanced technology, a pinhead of DNA could hold 100 million times more information.”⁹⁶

 

Information from intelligence.

Information is nonmaterial and, therefore, could not have originated from matter. Information can only come from intelligence. Co-authors L. Lester and R. Bohlin tell us: “Intelligence is a necessity in the origin of any informational code, including the genetic code…”⁹⁷ The vast amounts of information in the DNA can only have come from an intelligent source.

1962 Nobel Prize winner Francis Crick, co-discoverer of the DNA structure, had said that the more he studied the DNA double-helix, the more he became convinced that it could not have evolved by chance. In his book Life Itself, he wrote: “An honest man, armed with all the knowledge available to us now, could only state that, in some sense, the origins of life appears at the moment to be almost a miracle.”⁹⁸

On December 16, 2010, the History Channel aired interviews with scientists who admitted that evolution of the DNA molecule by chance or accident is totally impossible.⁹⁹

Designed on purpose. Biochemist Michael Behe of Lehigh University in Pennsylvania (Darwin’s Black Box: The Biochemical Challenge to Evolution, 1996) construes that “the straightforward conclusion is that many biochemical systems were designed. They were designed not by the laws of nature, not by chance and necessity; rather they were planned. The designer knew what the systems would look like when they were completed, then took steps to bring the systems about… Life on earth at its most fundamental level, in its most critical components, is the product of intelligent design.”¹⁰⁰

Natural processes, such as mutation, cannot alter the DNA. I.L. Cohen says that “any physical change of any size, shape or form is strictly the result of purposeful alignment of billions of nucleotides (in the DNA). Nature or species do not have the capacity to rearrange them nor to add to them… The only way we know for a DNA to be altered is through a meaningful intervention from an outside source of intelligence – one who knows what it is doing, such as our genetic engineers are now performing in the laboratories…”¹⁰¹

Every living cell (except a few highly specialized ones) carries in its DNA all the information needed reproduce a new, identical organism. To clone an entire human being, the scientist needs just one cell.

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⁹⁴John C. Walton, “Organization and the Origin of Life,” Origins, 1977, pp. 30–31

⁹⁵Dawkins, op. cit., Oxford University Press 30^th Anniversary Edition, 2006, p. 2

⁹⁶Jonathan Sarfati, DNA: Marvelous Messages or Mostly Mess?, March 2003, Internet

⁹⁷L. Lester and R. Bohlin, The Natural Limits to Biological Change, 1989, p. 157

⁹⁸Francis Crick, Life Itself, p. 88; quoted by Gary Stearman, “Rael, Inc., “Cloning for Life,” Prophecy in the News, February 2003, p. 12

⁹⁹Jan Marcussen, Newsletter, Mid-January Y2K+11, p. 2

¹⁰⁰Michael Behe, Darwin’s Black Box: The Biochemical Challenge to Evolution, 1996, p. 193

¹⁰¹Cohen, loc. cit.

 

(Excerpted from Chapter 5, Early Earth Enigmas, THE DEEP THINGS OF GOD: A Primer on the Secrets of Heaven and Earth by M.M. Tauson, Amazon.com)