The third scientific argument against the theory of evolution is found in the important scientific discovery of genetic code in DNA, thus implying what scientists refer to as “intelligent design”. I will attempt to summarise a selection of scientific articles written, that address this point. In December 2004 a renowned British philosopher, Antony Flew, made worldwide news when he repudiated a lifelong commitment to atheism, citing among other factors, evidence of intelligent design in the DNA molecule[1]. The modern theory of intelligent design was first formulated in the late 1970s and early 1980s by a group of scientists - Charles Thaxton, Walter Bradley, Roger Olson, and Dean Kenyon - who were trying to account for an enduring mystery of modern biology: the origin of the digital information encoded along the spine of the DNA molecule. In the book The Mystery of Life’s Origin, Thaxton and his colleagues first developed the idea that the information-bearing properties of DNA provided strong evidence of a prior but unspecified designing intelligence.
Over the last 25 years, scientists have discovered an exquisite world of nanotechnology within living cells. Inside these tiny labyrinthine enclosures, scientists have found functioning turbines, miniature pumps, sliding clamps, complex circuits, rotary engines, and machines for copying, reading and editing digital information - hardly the simple “globules of plasma” envisioned by Darwin’s contemporaries. Moreover, most of these circuits and machines depend on the coordinated function of many separate parts. For example, scientists have discovered that bacterial cells are propelled by miniature rotary engines called flagellar motors that rotate at speeds up to 100,000 rpm. These engines look for all-the world as if they were designed by the Mazda Corporation, with many distinct mechanical parts (made of proteins) including rotors, stators, O-rings, bushings, U-joints, and drive shafts. Is this appearance of design merely illusory? Could natural selection have produced this appearance in a neo-Darwinian fashion one tiny incremental mutation at a time? Biochemist Michael Behe argues ‘no.’ He points out that the flagellar motor depends upon the coordinated function of 30 protein parts. Yet the absence of any one of these parts results in the complete loss of motor function. Remove one of the necessary proteins (as scientists can do experimentally) and the rotary motor simply doesn’t work. The motor is, in Behe’s terminology, “irreducibly complex”[2]. This creates a problem for the Darwinian mechanism. Natural selection preserves or “selects” functional advantages. If a random mutation helps an organism survive, it can be preserved and passed on to the next generation. Yet, the flagellar motor has no function until after all of its 30 parts have been assembled. The 29 and 28-part versions of this motor do not work. Thus, natural selection can “select” or preserve the motor once it has arisen as a functioning whole, but it can do nothing to help build the motor in the first place. Based upon uniform and repeated experience, mankind knows of only one type of cause that produces irreducibly complex systems, i.e. intelligence. Indeed, whenever we encounter irreducibly complex systems — such as an integrated circuit or an internal combustion engine — and we know how they arose, invariably a designing engineer played a role. Thus, Behe concludes — based on our knowledge of what it takes to build functionally-integrated complex systems — that intelligent design best explains the origin of molecular machines within cells. Molecular machines appear designed because they were designed[3]. The strength of Behe’s design argument can be judged in part by the lack of credible response from his critics.
Stephen Meyer (PhD) makes a further argument for intelligent design in the following article; But consider an even more fundamental argument for design. In 1953 when Watson and Crick elucidated the structure of the DNA molecule, they made a startling discovery. The structure of DNA allows it to store information in the form of a four-character digital code. Strings of precisely sequenced chemicals called nucleotide bases store and transmit the assembly instructions — the information — for building the crucial protein molecules and machines the cell needs to survive. Francis Crick later developed this idea with his famous “sequence hypothesis” according to which the chemical constituents in DNA function like letters in a written language or symbols in a computer code. Just as English letters may convey a particular message depending on their arrangement, so too do certain sequences of chemical bases along the spine of a DNA molecule convey precise instructions for building proteins. The arrangement of the chemical characters determines the function of the sequence as a whole. Thus, the DNA molecule has the same property of “sequence specificity” that characterizes codes and language. As the evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins (an outspoken atheist), has acknowledged, “The machine code of the genes is uncannily computer-like”[4], and as Bill Gates has also noted, “DNA is like a computer program, but far, far more advanced than any software we’ve ever created”[5].
After the early 1960s, further discoveries made clear that the digital information in DNA and RNA is only part of a complex information processing system - an advanced form of nanotechnology that both mirrors and exceeds our own in its complexity, design logic and information storage density. Where did the digital information in the cell come from? And how did the cell’s complex information processing system arise? Today these questions lie at the heart of origin-of-life research. Clearly, the informational features of the cell at least appear designed. And to date no theory of undirected chemical evolution has explained the origin of the digital information needed to build the first living cell. Why? There is simply too much information in the cell to be explained by chance alone. And the information in DNA has also been shown to defy explanation by reference to the laws of chemistry. Saying otherwise would be like saying that a newspaper headline might arise as the result of the chemical attraction between ink and paper. Clearly “something else” is at work.
Yet, the scientists arguing for intelligent design do not do so merely because natural processes - chance, laws or the combination of the two-have failed to explain the origin of the information and information processing systems in cells. Instead, they also argue for design because they know from experience that systems possessing these features invariably arise from intelligent causes. The information on a computer screen can be traced back to a user or programmer. The information in a newspaper ultimately came from a writer - from a mental, rather than a strictly material, cause. DNA functions like a software program. We know from experience that software comes from programmers. We know generally that information - whether inscribed in hieroglyphics, written in a book or encoded in a radio signal - always arises from an intelligent source. So the discovery of information in the DNA molecule provides strong grounds for inferring that intelligence played a role in the origin of DNA, even if we weren’t there to observe the system coming into existence.[6]
And so, clearly both scripturally and scientifically, Darwin’s theory of evolution is proven to be false, for it is God who creates all life on the earth and He does that from nothing, “By faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God, so that the things which are seen were not made of things which are visible.” (Hebrews 11:3).
Theistic evolution
The third false creation narrative that I will briefly mention is the theory of “theistic evolution”. This is a relatively new theory, and is embraced by certain religious organizations such as the Roman Catholic Church and other similar mainline Protestant denominations[7]. The theory is born of compromise to try and make “church” doctrine compatible with the advancement in scientific discovery. And so, in order to keep the “church” relevant in modern society, the theory was developed that embraced the world’s view of evolution but inserted God into that process. And so, whereas evolution is based on unguided chance mutations resulting in new organisms, theistic evolution seeks to suggest that God guides the “unguided” chance mutations which then result in new organisms. The theory is mocked by the unbelievers who see it for what it is, i.e. trying to sneak God into the process through a back door. Proponents of this theory are at a loss in trying to explain how the “unguided” chance mutations of evolution can at the same be “guided” by a divine being. This theory is so far removed from scripture that it is very clear that those who embrace it, although they may be very religious, are not born-again believers.
Michael E.B. Maher
[1] Wikipedia
[2] Wikipedia
[3] Prof Michael Behe, Darwin’s Black Box
[4] Richard Dawkins writes in 'River Out of Eden'
[5] Gates, The Road Ahead, Penguin: London, Revised, 1996 p. 228
[6] From bacterial propulsion systems to human DNA, evidence of intelligent design is everywhere STEPHEN C. MEYER Ph.D DECEMBER 1, 2005
[7] Wikipedia
Comments