Category: Science & Faith

Many aspects of our lives on Earth show the splendor and glory of God’s creation. The Bible tells us, in Psalm 19:1-4, “The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands. ² Day after day they pour forth speech; night after night they reveal knowledge. ³ They have no speech, they use no words; no sound is heard from them. ⁴ Yet their voice goes out into all the earth, their words to the ends of the world.”

So how, exactly, do they “speak”? The environment that we and all other living things inhabit on Earth is a perfect result of an incredible amount of systematic preparation, a process that created the hills, valleys, rivers, oceans, and atmosphere that support life perfectly, but that we all take for granted. Furthermore, every living thing, be it human, animal, or plant, has, at the molecular level, a massive array of data contained within each living cell. This data directs the progression of the organism throughout its life, whether from embryo to aging adult, or from tiny seed to towering tree, and also into the next generation.

Everywhere we look we find this intricate beauty, and yet the human race is doing its best to convince everyone that all of this just happened as a result of blind chance. In America, Charles Darwin’s “Theory of Evolution by Natural Selection,” which teaches that all forms of life developed by chance, over a huge period of time, and came from a common ancestor, is presented as fact in all of our public schools. It is nota fact. It hasnotbeen demonstrated and proven. But it has been so eagerly accepted that now, even in higher education, any professor who speaks out against naturalism, the belief that everything came from natural sources, will find his or her career choices severely limited.

And yet, as the Bible says, “The fool has said in his heart, ‘There is no God.’” Two of the Psalms, 14 and 53, begin with these words. In each case, the words that follow are similar, “They are corrupt, they do abominable deeds; there is none who does good.” In each case here, the word “Fool” does not mean ignorant or stupid, it means sinful.[1]

The butterfly, with its beauty and its amazing life cycle, speaks out against this theory. Darwin stated, “If it could be demonstrated that any complex organ existed, which could not possibly have been formed by numerous, successive, slight modifications, my theory would absolutely break down. But I can find no such case.”[2]

Darwin’s theory depended on two things:
1) Variation: Random variations in the traits of individual organisms occur naturally and are passed on to their offspring.
2) Struggle for existence: “Survival of the fittest” ensures that advantageous traits are preserved and disadvantageous traits are eliminated from following generations.

The butterfly’s life cycle goes through the following stages: egg, caterpillar, chrysalis, butterfly. There is no reproduction until the final butterfly stage, so how could the intermediate stages have evolved, on a “numerous, successive, slight modification followed by survival of the fittest” basis, when there is no reproduction in the earlier stages to establish the continuation of any random “improvement?”

The Monarch butterfly takes this puzzle even further, in that it has four successive generations that each live for 3-4 weeks, before a “Methuselah” generation, that lives for about 8 months, is born. This generation has the ability to complete a thousand-mile journey from Canada to Mexico to find their ancestors’ original breeding grounds.[3] How do they know the way? What makes this special generation so much different from the others? All of the information to support this multi-generational life cycle must have been present in each egg originally laid by their ancestral Monarch butterflies in Mexico one year earlier.

The inescapable conclusion here is that the original butterfly egg must have been “designed” for its purpose, instead of having “evolved” over time by natural, random variations, as Darwin’s theory demands. Metamorphosis was first written about in the early twentieth century, about 60 years after Darwin published his theory, and yet, over one hundred years later, mankind in general still believes in evolution. It seems that we have amongst us a preponderance of “fools” who have said in their heart, “There is no God.”

[1]GotQuestions.org, What does the Bible mean when it says, “The fool says in his heart, ‘There is no God’”? https://www.gotquestions.org/fool-heart-no-God.html, accessed 3^rdJuly 2019.

[2]Charles Darwin, On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life, 24^thNovember 1859.

[3]The Monarch Super Generation, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, 16^thAugust 2017, http://www.fws.gov, https://www.fws.gov/midwest/news/MonarchMigrationFall17.html, accessed 2^ndJuly 2019.

 

A Little Learning . .

The saying “A little learning is a dangerous thing” may be proving true for proponents of naturalism. The constant and inexorable march of growing scientific knowledge is changing our understanding of the origins of life and the universe and now casts strong doubt over many assumptions made by scientists over the last century and a half. These assumptions, necessary to explain significant gaps in the evidence available to support theories essential to the case for naturalism, such as Darwinian evolution, are now being called into question by new and detailed evidence. Multiple new discoveries, ranging from the nature of the universe as a whole to the exciting new evidence in the field of microbiology, bring into question some of these assumptions and instead build a strong, cumulative case for the existence of an Intelligent Designer.

The Claims of Naturalism

In the Merriam-Webster dictionary, Naturalism is defined as “a theory denying that an event or object has a supernatural significance; specifically: the doctrine that scientific laws are adequate to account for all phenomena.” This definition does not explain how these “scientific laws” came into existence, or how, against incredible odds, they came to be so precisely adjusted to support human life on Earth. Nor does it tell us about the origination of the huge database of information contained within each living entity. Naturalism excludes the possible existence of a spiritual or supernatural realm and requires that all of the origination, creation, and development of life must have happened by chance within the natural properties of the materials and energy of the universe.

The Fine-Tuning of the Laws of Nature and of the Earth

The physical conditions governing the universe, the existence of matter, the Earth, and its galactic location are based on the four fundamental interactions of nature, also known as fundamental forces.[1] Two of these, the strong nuclear force and the weak nuclear force, operate at subatomic levels and their effects are not directly visible. They control the formation of the elements and the natural processes upon which the existence of the universe depends. The other two, gravity and electromagnetism, are widely evidenced and part of everyday life.

Our understanding of these forces is changing as a result of our increased ability to model variations in their levels, and we are beginning to understand the incredibly finely-tuned nature of our natural environment. As Karl Giberson, Executive V.P. of Biologos, states “For many years these forces were just numbers, part of the physicists’boring formulas. But in the past few decades all this has changed.Computer modeling makes it possible to see how the values of thesenumbers affect the structure of the universe, from the formation ofgalaxies to the structure of DNA.”[2] He goes on to explain that changing the force of gravity by even a very small amount would change the universe such that galaxies and planets, and hence any form of life, would not exist, and that the other three fundamental forces are delicately balanced in a similar way. Allen Hainline, in his Cross Examinedblog, provides further detail: if the force of gravity, for example, was stronger by just 1 in 10⁴⁰, the universe would be dominated by black holes instead of stars, and if it was one part in 10³⁶weaker, stars would be unstable.[3]

It is not only the absolute value of these forces that need to be precise, but there are significant constraints on the ratios of one force to another. In his article The Designed Just-So Universe, Walter Bradley, Distinguished Professor of Engineering at Baylor University, explains that a two percent increase in the strong nuclear force relative to the electromagnetic force would result in the elimination of hydrogen, resulting in no sustainable stars and no water.[4]

Not by Chance

The chances of just one of the many conditions relating to the fundamental forces being correct by chance are almost that of winning the Powerball lottery five times in succession (1 in 250,000,000⁵or 1 in 10⁴²). Looking at these odds, it is much more logical to believe in design than in chance. The finely-tuned nature of so many different parameters, at multiple levels, and to such a fine degree of accuracy, builds a strong, cumulative case for the existence of an Intelligent Designer with the intent of creating an attractive environment for His creation to inhabit.

 

[1]Robert Curley, “Fundamental Interaction”, Encyclopaedia Britannica, July 20, 2006, http://www.britannica.com/science/fundamental-interaction (accessed February 28, 2016)

[2]Karl Giberson, “The Road Less Travelled”, Biologos Blog, May 4, 2009, accessed February 22, 2016, http://biologos.org/blogs/archive/the-road-less-traveled.

[3]Allen Hainline, “Fine-tuning of the Force Strengths to Permit Life”, Cross Examined Blog, August 3, 2014, accessed February 28, 2016.

[4]Walter L. Bradley, “The Designed ‘Just So’ Universe”, 1999, http://www.leaderu.com/offices/bradley/docs/universe.html, accessed February 28, 2016.

Part 1 of this blog described the amazing amount of expertly-designed digital information that is held within the human body. Part 2 outlines the existence of multiple forms of human data and their embedded communication processes, all working together to allow a human body to adapt to different environments.

More Than One Form of Data

There is much still to be discovered about the way genes function in the body, and the field of epigenetics is a rapidly growing area. Epigenetics is the study of biological mechanisms that change the way genes are expressed. These mechanisms respond to certain circumstances in life by causing specific genes to become dormant or active. As McGill University epigenetics pioneer Moshe Szyf comments in this extract from Febish and Oxley’s book Food for Thought: An Epigenetic Guide to Wellness, “Epigenetics introduces the concept of free will into our idea of genetics”[1]. In other words, where we live and how we live will affect the way that our fixed, inherited, gene set functions. He further compares DNA to a computer’s hardware, epigenetics to its software, and the environment to data for the software.

Epigenetic Communication

Since the epigenome is independent of DNA, this adds a further dimension to the information held within human cells. It would appear that this bank of human information at the cellular level is so powerful, and has such an efficient communications system, that it can correct itself when needed, and can manage the interaction between separate databases in response to changing environments and conditions external to the body. Febish and Oxley describe a form of epigenetic communication between cells:

Our cells, through epigenetics, can send signals in our bodies that will throw ON/OFF gene switches within a cell, between neighboring cells and between distant cells. Neighboring cells can communicate via direct connect (touching each other) with each other like a handshake. Nearby cells can communicate by passing signals back and forth like throwing a ball in a game of catch. Some signals, like stress, send out broadcasts like a radio or TV signal. These broadcasts affect large number of cells throughout the body. Stress signals the body to prepare for an event. Different cells do different things to prepare. The signal stops and things return to normal when the stressful event ends.[2]

From Disorder to Order

Opponents of Intelligent Design believe that the assembly of this amazing amount of structured information that forms the human body all happened as a result of the accumulation of random, unguided processes over a very long period of time. However, this movement from disorder to order is completely at odds with the second law of thermodynamics, which indicates that any system left to its own devices will naturally decay over time, rather than spontaneously organizing itself in this way. Further, if we developed on the “survival of the fittest” basis, it would have been necessary for all of the various conditions that our epigenome can adapt to, to have been encountered, and remembered, during the human body’s earlier development. An intelligent designer, however, who lives outside of time and could see the whole of mankind’s existence from start to finish, would be able to “design in” the ability to cope with all that we might encounter, including environments that we have not yet seen.

 

[1]George J. Febish and Jo Anne Oxley, Food For Thought: An Epigenetic Guide to Wellness, (Bloomington, IN, Xlibris, 2011) Kindle edition, Kindle location 534.

[2]Ibid., Kindle location 600.

As a member of the human race, each and every one of us is a huge, walking library of exquisitely-crafted information.

Large Amounts of Data (Thirty Trillion DVDs) in each Human Body

Each human being is effectively a repository of a huge amount of data, and scientists are now beginning to discover the nature of the information that is encoded within the human body. It seems that not only is there an incredibly large amount of data in each human cell, but this data is also encoded into high-quality information. Looking at the amount of data present, Yevgeniy Grigoryev, doctoral graduate of the Scripps Research Institute, estimates information equivalent to 1.5 gigabytes to be present in a single DNA molecule.[1]  Using an estimate of one hundred trillion cells in the human body, he further equates this to an amount of information in the whole body equal to one hundred and fifty trillion gigabytes, or 150 x 10²¹bytes. In current storage terms this is equivalent to thirty trillion DVDs!

Specified Complexity

The high quality of the information within the body is described by Stephen Meyer in his book, Signature in the Cell.[2] Quoted in a magazine interview about the book, Meyer states “the discovery that DNA codes information in a digital form points decisively back to a prior intelligence”.[3] In the book, he describes the nature of the information in DNA as being of “specified complexity”. The term “specified complexity” or “complex specified information” relates to a concept adopted by William Dembski and describes the introduction of previously-determined constraints into otherwise random information. An example of this is the use of the English language, which employs the letters of a 26-character code, but only in specific combinations (words) that can also be recognized by any others familiar with the language. The creation of the language requires design, and hence intelligence, and it is reasonable to assume the same requirements for the organized and intricate information stored within the human body.

Information Communication

Meyer also quotes information scientist Hubert Yockey, “The genetic code is constructed to confront and solve the problems of communication and recording by the same principles found… in modern communication and computer codes.” Since “modern communication and computer codes” are obviously products of design, then it is reasonable to assume that the genetic code is also a product of design. A comparison of the efficiency and effectiveness of these two types of design shows the genetic code to be superior by far in all aspects. From this we can also conclude that its designer is much more capable than the best that mankind can offer.

Apart from the genetic code itself, there are many other attributes and processes of the cell that also require the existence of data to function correctly, including cytoplasm, endoplasmic reticulum, ribosomes and lysosomes. In popular school materials, these elements are likened to the factory floor, assembly line, workers, and maintenance crew of a functioning factory. While explaining the function of the elements, these materials all fail to explain how each element knows how to do the task assigned to it. A modern factory will have well-documented, designed processes, plus a training department to ensure that all staff members know how to do their jobs. The living cell, far more efficient than any process of human design, appears to have all of the required manufacturing and processing information designed into its various elements.

In part 2 of this blog – More Than One Form of Data.

 

[1]Yevgeniy Grigoryev, “How Much Information Is Stored in the Human Genome?”Bytesize Bio, 16th March, 2012, http://bitesizebio.com/8378/how-much-information-is-stored-in-the-human-genome/, accessed February 29, 2016.

[2]Stephen Meyer, Signature in the Cell,(New York: Harper Collins 2009), Kindle Edition, 110.

[3]Stephen Meyer, “Can DNA Prove the Existence of a Designer?” Biola Magazine, summer 2010, http://magazine.biola.edu/article/10-summer/can-dna-prove-the-existence-of-an-intelligent-desi/, accessed February 29, 2016.