“Ever since the creation of the world his invisible nature, namely, his eternal power and deity, has been clearly perceived in the things that have been made” (Rom. 1:20, NRSV).
Written by Steven Barto, B.S., Psy.
DOUGLAS AXE WRITES “Of all the controversial ideas to come from modern science, none has brought more awkwardness than Darwin’s idea of evolution through natural selection” (1). Darwin defines natural selection as “the principle by which each slight variation [of a trait], if useful, is preserved” (2). Darwin is notoriously noted for failing to answer the question of origin itself. In particular, our origin. Ravi Zacharias (1946-2020) listed four questions everyone asks: (1) How did we get here? (2) What is the purpose of life? (3) How do we determine good and evil (morality)? and (4) Where are we going when we die?
It is clear we cannot find consensus regarding the big question of where we came from, but Axe says, “…we should all agree on the importance of finding the answer” (3). So, if we’re all similarly curious about the beginning of things, what could be the source of our disconnect when discussing origin? Scientists who deny the existence of God accuse creationists of placing God in the gaps of our scientific knowledge. However, this criticism cuts both ways. A functional atheist also can reach for pat explanations in the face of mystery. But for him, the explanation will never be God (4).
Bioinformation: The Code of Life
As a molecular biologist, Douglas Axe was interested in commonalities between genetic code and computer code. In software programs and in human languages, it is not uncommon to encounter non-functional sequences. Leisola and Witt remind us that random changes to a software program will degrade its meaning or function. They add, “[This] is why attempts to evolve meaningful sentences or functional software code through a truly neo-Darwinian process have failed” (5). Every bit of code (genetic or computer) is vital to the process, and cannot be changed by one letter (A, G, C, T) or number (0s and 1s). Axe took this concept further, focusing on proteins (enzyme proteins in this case) because they demand sequence specificity and a measurable chemical function.
What Axe discovered was the rarity of functional proteins needed for life. In reporting Axe’s findings, Leisola and Witt writes, “You can’t evolve fundamentally new and functional information through a blind process because there is just too much non-functional gibberish to wade through” (6). Axe found that the ratio of functional proteins to non-functional gibberish was 1 in 10 to the 77th power. That’s a 1 followed by 77 zeroes! Axe concluded that if all the life on Earth for billions of years was busily searching via random mutation for even one new protein in the cosmic-sized ocean of non-functional protein gibberish, it couldn’t find it. A new life form requires not one but many hundreds of new protein types along with lots of tricky epigenetic information.
We are familiar with JavaScript and Python, the most prevalent computer coding languages in the world today. Whether developers prefer Python with its indentation style or JavaScript’s curly braces, there would be no programs without coding. Software can sometimes contain a bug—an error, flaw or fault in the program that causes it to produce incorrect or unexpected results, or to behave in unintended ways. The process of debugging these errors uses formal techniques and tools to pinpoint the exact nature and location in the code where the bug has occurred.
A binary code represents text, computer processor instructions, or other data using a two-symbol system of 0s and 1s from the binary number system. The code assigns a pattern of binary digits, also known as bits, to each character, instruction, etc. Human genetics also uses a coding system which allows for gene sequencing. The genetic code for living organisms is based upon a four-letter coding system that uses A, C, G, T (adenine, cytosine, guanine, and thymine), four nitrogenous bases containing an organism’s DNA information. Douglas Axe says the chemistry happening inside growing cells is “highly active and complex,” adding the amazing “elegance of the automatic decision-makers working on the molecular scale to keep the various chemicals of life at the right level” (7). Imagine if a coding bug were to occur in the genetic “programming” of a living organism. Depending on the variation, the results could be catastrophic.
Nothwithstanding the foregoing, “information” needs a source. Computer code simply cannot write itself from scratch. It needs a “programmer” who knows the coding language. The same is true of genetic code. The collection of biological data points on the molecular biology of cell structure, growth, development, differentiation, division and function is called bioinformation. Collection of biological data points requires simple to complex analysis of small, medium and large scale data describing cell structures and events. Walsh writes, “I am not a theologian with an intimate acquaintance with the Bible. I do know enough about science and religion, however, to know that science points the way to understanding God’s creation” (8). Walsh adds, “God is purposely in the shadows, but there is enough light for those who wish to see, and enough obscurity for those who do not” (9).
Darwin’s proposal that all of life can be pinpointed by natural selection on variation has been given full-reign in schools and universities throughout the world. Amazingly, this is allowed even though the basic mechanisms of life remained a complete mystery until a few decades ago. What have we learned? Life is a molecular phenomenon of remarkable intricacy. All life forms (including us) are comprised of molecules that “…act as the nuts and bolts, gears and pulleys, of biological systems” (10). Life forms come down to bio-molecules. Accordingly, “…we cannot rightly study the science of biochemistry, which studies those molecules, unless we examine the very foundation of life” (11).
Behe believes cells swim using machines, copy themselves with machinery, ingest food with machinery. He writes, “In short, highly sophisticated molecular machines control every cellular process. Thus the details of life are finely calibrated, and the machinery of life enormously complex” (12). Indeed, life forms take in and metabolize “fuel”via tiny combustion engines. Molecular machines raise questions not answered by Darwinism’s universal reach.
What About the Blood?
Blood behaves in a remarkable way.* You’ve notice that when a container of liquid springs a leak, the fluid drains out. No active process resists the flow. Eventually, the container is empty. But when a person suffers a cut it only bleeds for a short time before a clot stops the flow. The clot hardens, and the cut heals. Clotting is something most of us don’t think about. Biochemical analysis of this process has shown that blood clotting—also called coagulation—is a very complex system dependent on several key protein parts. Bleeding causes a “domino effect” in which a series of steps are set in motion. When your body detects a bleed, the clotting factors are switched on in a particular order, one after the other. Each factor activates the next until they form a clot. This is known as the coagulation cascade.
Coagulation is one of many “automatic” processes performed by our bodies. Clotting requires extreme precision. When a pressurized blood circulatory system is punctured, a clot must form quickly or the animal will bleed to death. If the blood congeals at the wrong time or place, the clot may block circulation as it does in heart attacks and strokes. A clot has to stop bleeding all along the length of the cut, sealing it completely. Remarkably, blood clotting has to be confined to the cut or the entire blood system might solidify, killing the animal. Consequently, the clotting of blood must be tightly controlled so that the clot forms only when and where it is required.
“Proteins are the machinery of living tissue that builds the structures and carries out the chemical reactions necessary for life… proteins carry out amazingly diverse functions.” —Michael Behe.
Behe writes, “About 2 to 3 percent of the protein in blood plasma (the part that’s left after the red blood cells are removed) consists of a protein complex called fibrinogen. The name fibrinogen is easy to remember because the protein makes “fibers” that form the clot” (13). Fibrogen is a weapon waiting to be unleashed. Behe says, “Almost all of the other proteins involved in blood clotting control the timing and placement of the clot.” He notes that fibrogen is a composite of six protein chains, containing twin pairs of three different proteins. Fibrogen is a rod-shaped molecule, with two round bumps on each end of the rod and a single round bump in the middle. It sort-of looks like a set of barbells. Fibrogen typically floats around in the blood, waiting until a cut or injury causes bleeding. A protein called thrombin slices off several small pieced from two of the three pairs of protein chains in fibrogen. This produces fibrin. These molecules are “sticky,” allowing for a clot to form.
Concluding Remarks
Darwin stood out loud-and-proud in 1859. Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection—subtitled The Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life—sold out in a matter of days. Then and now, philosophers have been trying to teach the story of origins without any reference to God. We have discovered that cells are far more complex and sophisticated than Darwin could have conceived of. How did mere chance produce this, when even human planning and engineering cannot? In fact, no laboratory has come close to replicating even a single human hair! He didn’t know about the type or quantity of information embedded within the cell. In fact, he assumed it would be very elementary, requiring only a few instructions to tell the cell how to function. Each human cell contains thousands of uniquely codified instructions that have to be translated, transported and reproduced. Today, we know these instructions are based in the human gene. Information is not made of matter—it has no mass, length or width—but it can be conveyed by matter. The origin of this “information” has not been explained by science.
Darwin was aware of what is called the “Cambrian explosion”—fossils of a bewildering variety of complex life-forms appearing suddenly, without predecessors, in the same level of the fossil record. This obviously did not fit his evolutionary model of simple-to-complex life. Instead of a few related organisms appearing early in the fossil record as he hoped, there was an explosion of life—where the various main body types (called phyla) of living creatures seem to arise around the same time—in fact, 32 of the 33 phyla that we see today. Comparing this development to the progress of man’s inventions, it would be as if a toaster, a washing machine, a refrigerator, an air conditioner and a car suddenly came on the scene with no mechanical devices preceding them.
If macro evolution were a scientific reality, we should expect to see the many difficulties of Darwin’s theory solved by now. Moreover, we would hope evolutionists would have explained how many living creatures of varying complexity appear around the same time instead of slowly, through “intermediary” species, over millions of years. Incidentally, intermediary fossils have not been found. Madeline Nash says, “Creatures with teeth and tentacles and claws and jaws materialized with the suddenness of apparitions. In a burst of creativity like nothing before or since, nature appears to have sketched out the blueprints for virtually the whole of the animal kingdom. This explosion of biological diversity is described by scientists as biology’s Big Bang” (“When Life Exploded,” Time, Dec. 4, 1995, p. 68) (bold italics added). Douglas Axe believes biology such as this confirms our intuition that life is designed, and that a great amount of living organisms appeared suddenly and without intermediary stages of progression.
Footnotes
(1) Douglas Axe, Undeniable: How Biology Confirms Our Intuition That Life is Designed (New York, NY: HarperCollins, 2016), 3.
(2) Charles Darwin, On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection (London, UK: John Murray Publishing), 1859.
(3) Axe, 9.
(4) Leisola & Witt, Heretic: One Scientist’s Journey from Darwin to Design (Seattle, WA: Discovery Institute Press, 2018), 11.
(5) Leisola & Witt, 39.
(6) Ibid., 40.
(7) Axe, Ibid., 14.
(8) Anthony Walsh, God, Science, and Society (Wilmington, DE: Vernon Press, 2020), x-xi.
(9) Ibid., 1.
(10) Michael Behe, Darwin’s Black Box: The Biochemical Challenge to Evolution (New York, NY: Free Press, a Division of Simon & Schuster, Inc., 2006), x.
(11) Ibid., x.
(12) Ibid., 5.
(13) Behe, Ibid., 79.
* My two paragraphs following the asterisk are derivative of Michael Behe, found on pages 11-12 of Darwin’s Black Box.
The Accidental Apologist 