In
every cell, there is one indispensable molecule and this is DNA. Deoxyribonucleic
acid is a molecule in the cells of living organisms which contains the assembly
instructions for the molecular machinery in the cell. How the protein parts are
assembled is absolutely critical for the machinery and thus the living cell to
exist. It therefore is known as one of
the building blocks of life, or the blueprints to life. These ‘assembly instructions’ constitute a
precise software code written in a genetic language using a set of four
nitrogenous base “letters”: A, G, C & T. (Adenine, Guanine, Cytosine &
Thymine).
Hence
by using these four basic units called nucleotides they store immense amounts
of information, and those are formed from twenty amino acids. These are like
the letters of a genetic language to produce the proteins for living things. The stored information is immense. There is a
picture from 1956 of a hard drive being unloaded from a plane with a fork lift.
This huge hard drive was only 5 MB, which makes you appreciate the fact that
you can carry a flash drive of 128 GB in your shirt pocket and forget
that it’s there. Computer memory technicians would be thrilled to have anywhere
near the storage capacity of the information in one pinhead amount of DNA. If
printed on books, they could stretch to the moon 500 times.
In
addition to the huge storage capacity of DNA, its complexity and functions are still
being discovered. It copies itself, encodes genetic material that determines
what an organism will be and look like, is involved in gene regulation,
self-repair and more. Decades ago when scientists took a sampling of the genome
(which included DNA and more), they decided that non-coding DNA sequences were
“junk” based on evolutionary biases and assumptions. Since then, the creationists
who said, essentially, “not so fast, that’s not junk” were proved right. Since we have found that other things like the
ATP synthase, circular RNA and further functions of DNA have been discovered.
Now
the existence of a software code that necessarily predates any life is enough
to conclude that an intelligent creator must have provided the information, but
there is one other interesting twist (literally!), and that is the container
for that information. A DNA molecule is
completely unique from all other molecules. Its double helix design is
perfectly constructed to contain the 750 meg of information in a single
molecule. In fact, if the tightly twisted double helix were stretched
completely out, it would be 700 feet long.
The
tricky part is that this molecule could not have evolved – it predated life
itself since a cell cannot be constructed without the instruction molecule. “If proteins appeared first, so that they
could eventually catalyze the formation of nucleic acids, how was the
information necessary to produce the proteins themselves coded? On the other hand, if nucleic acids came
first, thereby embodying the information necessary to obtain proteins, how were
acids replicated and translated into proteins?” said Dr. Massimo
Pigliucci. To dumb it down he is saying
there is no way the DNA and genetic code could have evolved by chance.
Sir
Fred Hoyle even called the idea of these building blocks of life arriving by
chance “nonsense of a high order”. The
chances of amino acids forming by chance (which is complicated by needing the
proper conditions and sequence) are so small, they are impossible. Therefore many
scientists when faced with this turn to panspermia - the belief that aliens
seeded life on earth - but that causes its own set of problems and has zero
evidence for it. Meanwhile the God who is
the author of the Bible has numerous supernatural and prophetic evidence which
gets ignored. With chance out of the
picture, DNA is a testimony of the certainty of the Creator, who has given us
his self-revelation in the Bible.
And
here’s the truly amazing part. In the
Bible it does not use the word DNA but it does give a hint to how humans are
formed in the womb which would have been impossible to tell without our current
technology. Psalm 139 describes us as being “knit” in the womb and the Hebrew could be translated as “needlework” which is
like how the DNA works – a needle that fashions all parts of our bodies
together in the womb, a design that takes place stitch by stitch. This Psalm describes the human “substance” that
God individually knows, the uniqueness of each person and their unique
blueprint for life stored in the DNA.
So there are two undeniable proofs of the existence of an intelligent creator in: Firstly, the genetic code itself with its specific, complex and very precise information and secondly, the incredible storage container for this code – the double helix designed DNA molecule. Both are indispensable to the living cell and both predate life itself needing a spectacular source for their origin and what better source than the one who claims to be the author of this remarkable building block of life?
— Cowboy Bob Sorensen & B Brenton
