The Fatal Genetic problem-Genetically speaking, the information sequences found in DNA cannot be formed by random chance. I say this because the mathematical probability is zero. A single chromosome when stretched head to tail is over 7 feet tall, crammed with genetic information. Billions upon billions of information sequences in just one single chromosome. Let me take you through a short example of why this could never have generated randomly- The word 'information' is 11 letters long. This is a simple example of a portion of DNA. Information makes sense to us only because it contains certain letters in a certain order. The same is true for DNA. Taking just this example, let's see if 'information' is likely to ever generate randomly. There are 26 characters in the English alphabet (We are making the assumption that only English letters will be used in the process- which is a huge break in favor of evolution and random chance), which makes the possibility of getting an 'i' as the first letter 1 in 26. The probability of getting an 'n' on the next letter is also one in 26. The probability for each successive letter is also 1/26. To get the initial probability of getting 'information' from one try, you simply multiply all the probabilities together, which turns out to be (1/26)^11 or one in 3.67 * 10 ^ 15. That's one in 3.67 million billion. Let's assume that there was someone somewhere sitting at a computer randomly typing 11 letters per second (which is darn fast!). That makes for one try per second. To get the probability that this person has typed any 'information' by any certain point in time, just plug it in-10,000 years .315% 100,000 years 3.10% 1,000,000 years 27.0% 2,000,000 years 46.8% 2,200,000 years 50.0% 3,000,000 years 61.2% 4,000,000 years 71.7% 5,000,000 years 79.3% 10,000,000 years 95.7% 14,700,000 years 99.0% As you can see, the statistics against any random development of information are staggering. It would likely take over 2.2 million years of constant speed typing to generate the 11 letter word information. Now what about a strand of genetic information itself billions of times longer than a simple word recognizable to humans? How about the problem that the life form must get there in the first place, AND attempt reproduction every second which does result in a mutated DNA sequence. When you consider all of this, the 2.2 million years looks like child's play. Please keep in mind that according to all naturalistic scientists who believe what they preach, evolution is an unguided process- it is random, and therefore targets cannot be applied to the case above. In other words, once 'i' is found, the DNA cannot lock on to it and mutate the other 10 slots because the rest of the sequence must make sense to survive and pass on genes. In order for the gene to pass on, it must be of benefit to the organism, and anything less than 'information' in this case is not good enough. According to natural selection the bad genes would be selected out. Keep in mind, this is just a very simplified example and should give you strong evidence that genetically, out in the wild in nature, developing new organs, parts, and intricate DNA sequences just isn't feasible, not in a million years. Case in point, how can you justify the thought that God did not design the information that runs our bodies? The intricate complexity of life and matter points to a creator-Life is far too complex to have evolved by chance. What is the chance of someone throwing a few million pennies up in the air so that they land in the spitting image of the Mona Lisa? Worse than one in ten trillion. What are the chances if no one is there to throw them? It's absolutely impossible. So it is with God and evolution. One- life and the earth are just too complex to be an accident, and plain down right impossible without a guiding force behind them. Ever study the human body? Think about how complex it is. We've all taken biology. How many bones, muscles, and nerves do we have that work together perfectly in unison? Think about the human heart, the lungs, the blood cells, and the body's ability to fight off disease. Not complex enough for you? Try ecology. Look at how beautifully life works. Plants synthesize energy, animals eat those plants, animals eat those animals, animals eat those animals, and so on. Take one, just one link out and the earth's ecology collapses. What about the way rivers flow and the winds blow to scatter seed and water so plants grow? Still not complex enough? What about how perfectly our universe revolves around the sun just so that we get the perfect amount of heat from the sun to survive. Accident? Yeah, right. Think about the dimensions we live in- where did they come from? Where did the scientific laws themselves come from? Who determined what they'd be? What about time? How did that get started? Take your pick, everything has a purpose and is beautifully created by a beautiful Creator. Even if the information found in the DNA strands could have been generated, the odds against something complex as a single human organ to have formed through Darwin's evolution is astronomical. Even if Darwinism was scientifically possible, when faced with the odds- any rational thinking person would bet against darwinism and the cosmos as a 'random design'.Irreducible Complexity-Darwin's theory bets the house that things increase in complexity (defying the scientific law of Entropy [The Second Law of Thermodynamics]) from simple complexity to extreme complexity. He uses the eye as an example to illustrate this in "The Origin of Species" (you can read the quote in another of my essays). Unfortunately, there is no such thing as a simple eye. The simplest would be a patch of light-sensitive skin appropriate size, position, and material, with a complex system of optical nerves connecting it to the brain, brain that has the ability to interpret these signals and communicate commands regarding focus back to the eye. I'd like to quote Biochemist Michael Behe, who explains on pages 18-21 of his book Darwin's Black Box just how complex the functioning of a 'simple' eye would have to be."When light first strikes the retina a photon interacts with a molecule called 11-cis-retinal, which rearranges within picoseconds to trans-retinal. (A picosecond is about the time it takes for light to travel the breadth of a human hair.) The change in shape of the retinal molecule forces a change in the shape of the protein, rhodopsin, to which the retinal is tightly bound. The protein's metamorphosis alters its behavior. Now called metarhodopsin II, the protein sticks to another protein, called transducin. Before bumping into metarhodopsin II, transducin had tightly bound a small molecule called GDP. But when transducin interacts with metarhodopsin II, the GDP falls off and a molecule called GTP binds to transducin. (GDP is closely related to, but critically different from, GDP.) GTP-transducin-metarhodopsin II now binds to a protein called phosphodiesterase, located in the inner membrane of the cell. When attatched to metarhodopsin II and its entourage, the phosphodiesterase aquires the chemical ability to "cut" a molecule called cGMP (a chemical relative of both GDP and GTP). Initially esterase lowers its concntration, just as a pulled plug lowers the water level in a bathtub. Another membrane protein that binds cGMP is called an ion channel. It acts as a gateway that regulates the number of sodim ions in the cell. Normally the ion channel allows sodium ions to flow into the cell, while a seperate protein actively pumps them out again. The dual action of the ion channel an pump keeps the level of sodium ions in the cell within a narrow range. When the amount of cGMP is reduced because of cleavage by the phosphodiesterase, the ion channel closes, causing the celluar concentration of positively charged sodium ions to be reduced. This causes an imbalance of charge across the cell membrane that, finally, causes a current to be transmitted down the optic nerve to the brain. That result, when interpreted by the brain, is vision. If the reactions mentioned above were the only ones that operated in the cell, the supply of 11-cis-retinal, cGMP, and sodium ions would quickly be depleted. Something has to turn off the proteins that were turned on and restore the cell to its original state. Several mechanisms do this. First, in the dark the ion channel (in addition to sodium ions) also lets calcium ions into the cell. The calcium is pumped back out by a different protein so that a constant calcium concentration is maintained. When cGMP levels fall, shutting down the ion channel, the calcium ion concentration decreases, too. The phosphodiesterase enzyme, which destroys cGMP, slows down at lower calcium concentration. Second, a protein called guanylate cyclase begins to resynthesize cGMP when calcium levels start to fall. Third, while all of this is going on, metarhodopsin II is chemically modified by an enzyme called rhodopsin kinase. The modified rhodopsin then binds to a protein known as arrestin, which prevents he rhodopsin from activating more transducin. So the cell contains mechanisms to limit the amplified signal stated by a single photon. Trans-retinal eventually falls off rhodopsin and must be reconverted to 11-cis-retinal and again bound by rhodopsin to get back to the starting point for another visual cycle. To accomplish this, trans-retinal is first chemically modified by an enzyme to trans-retinol -- a form containing two more hydrogen atoms. A second enzyme then converts the molecule to 11-cis-retinol. Finally, a third enzyme removes the previously added hydrogen atoms to form 11-cis-retinal, a cycle is complete."The evolutionist either must go into biochemistry on how this process may be simplified (it cannot be simplified), or explain how disjointed parts of this system mutated somehow providing use to the organism until someday they all decided to connect (wishful and fanciful thinking in the world of actual science), or explain how and why all this genetic information could suddenly appear and introduce vision in an animal previously blind (this is impossible as well). It appears darwinism is held in checkmate here. There are no alternatives. I challenge any evolutionist to try to solve this trilemma- there is no solution to the mess. In light of what science has to offer, specifically biochemistry, darwinism and macroevolution take a fatal fall. For those of you not too adept in biochemistry, here is a brief analogy- Think of a simple car motor. What can you take out without killing the operation of the car? Nothing- everything has a purpose and is essential to the running of the car. The parts simply could not appear, yet they are there and functioning together as a team. There is no way the parts just could have happened to be lying around in the right place and then boom a wind pushes them all together into a working engine. The same principle is true with nature. Irreducible Complexity is everywhere, from a single cell to different organs from different species and creations of man across the world.
|