Can We Trust the Bible?
June 10, 2024
A Dream About the End Times
June 14, 2024Art experts will pore over an unattributed painting, examining the painter’s technique, style and composition. They study the paints and pigments used, the canvas and the frame. They scour its provenance and records of ownership and what claims have been made about it. It is not uncommon for a painting without a visible signature to nonetheless be attributed to a famous artist because the artist’s signature is in effect embedded in every aspect of their work: its conception, execution and framing.
Since the discovery of the structure of DNA in 1953, biology has been in a golden age. The staggering complexity of what has been found continues to amaze even the scientists making the discoveries. Let’s consider DNA in more detail. It is the code for life. It is contained in every living cell and holds the information for each cell to function.
An analogy will help us here. The astonishing digital world is built on computer code that ultimately exists as a series of 1s and 0s. That’s it. At its most fundamental level, beneath any apps and the operating system is the physical interaction between switches that are open or closed, storing information in binary: 1s and 0s.
DNA is built on a 4-letter code rather than a binary one. Four chemicals – adenine, cytosine, guanine and thymine – form a 4-letter code. The A, C, G, and T combine together into the famous long double-helix structure. Just as the 1s and 0s in computer code can combine in any order to form meaningful code, so the As, Cs, Gs, and Ts can associate together in any order, and act as an information-carrying mechanism. That information codes for the making of other chemicals that in turn are organised to form the cell, which hosts the same DNA.
Complexities
Darwin thought cells were fairly simple based on the resolution of the microscopes available in his day. Now we know that, in terms of complexity, cells are more like vast factories with multiple production lines. Picture a massive factory with a vast warehouse attached, all shrunk to smaller than a dot, and you get a more accurate picture.
Those incredible cells also interact within organs such as the kidneys or lungs, which are themselves part of complex interlinked systems within the body, all coordinated by the DNA as well. The amount of precisely controlled chemistry going on within our bodies simply for us to remain alive beggars belief. Think of 400 billion synchronised chemical reactions that are occurring in our bodies every second (see www.biochemical-pathways.com).
This is greater complexity than a super-computer. How does DNA achieve this?
The DNA code
The DNA code in your body contains approximately 3 billion letters, yet it is microscopic. The information density is incredible. You have something in the order of 30-40 trillion cells in your body that work together harmoniously, yet they resulted from a sperm and an egg forming the first cell that then divided and differentiated into all the cells in your body. Where did this vast amount of information come from? We have only scratched the surface of the complexity of DNA, and new discoveries are coming all the time. There is yet a greater conundrum:
DNA degrades quickly outside the body. It needs a cell to host it, but it is also responsible for building and maintaining the cell within which it resides. This represents an almost impossible riddle for evolutionary explanations of where life came from, because both the complete cell and the DNA need to come together at the same time.
When we look at computers and smartphones, we recognise that a designer conceived them and then made them a reality. We don’t assume that the physical parts of the microchip self-assembled and then came together with other parts to form a computer and the operating system also self-assembled within the computer, all the time with no power source connected.
Time+chance?
The evolutionary explanation of life is ultimately a very simple claim: all life resulted from time+chance with no external input. Yet, the extreme complexity of DNA and of cellular biochemistry makes such a claim much less believable. The idea that time plus chance accidentally resulted in information and then in functioning cells and life forms just isn’t credible. If it is hard to get to a single cell by time and chance alone, it is much harder to get to a biologist, who requires vastly more information to exist!
Many scientists are no longer able to reconcile the facts of biology with the absence of a designer. Stephen Meyer caused a storm with his 2009 book Signature in the Cell. Looking at the mind-blowing complexity of DNA and the fact that the information had to precede the biological reality, he came to the conclusion that there must be a Designer: in short, God.
A man of God once noted:
‘For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you because I am wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well’ (Psalm 139:13, 14).
When you personally weigh that evidence and realise the implications of the Designer’s signature in the DNA in every cell, are you willing to find out more about that Designer?
Duncan Bayliss has been a University Lecturer in Geography for 30 years. Based in England, he loves travel and travel writing.
His book, The Possibility of Belief, The Way Back to Hope, sets out the case that Christian belief is reasonable, built on good evidence and is not a leap in the dark. 'The Possibility of Belief' is available on Amazon.
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