I have read a number of articles on intelligent design and have enjoyed the works of authors such as Michael Behe, Dean Overman, and Roy Varghese to name a few. When I heard the arguments of the atheists my mind always came back to what I believe is the essential issue and that is mathematics.
This article is not for everyone. I feel the need to use mathematics and not everyone is comfortable with that approach. To the person who enjoys the mental challenge, I hope this can focus us on one simple aspect – if the difference between an ape like creature and a scientist was a 100 DNA long protein - the sheer number of combinations of that DNA string would be so great that one would be faced with the conclusion, in my opinion, that a divine intervention is the obvious solution.
The astronomer Carl Sagan who had written books espousing atheism wrote the novel “Contact” which was made into a movie. The main character of the movie is Ellie, an astronomer in search for intelligent life. She turns to her friend and says “there are 400 billion stars out there just in our galaxy alone, if only one of a million of those had planets, and if just one out of a million of those had life and if just one out of a million of those had intelligent life then there would be millions of civilization out there”. I accept Sagan’ argument but will push it to the extreme to show that the opposite conclusion is the only reasonable solution.
What is the difficulty with evolutionary development into intelligent life form? Any changes to a living creature must be passed on to its offspring genetically. Dr. Francis Collins, head of the Human Genome Project, wrote “In the mid-nineteenth Century, Darwin had no way of knowing what the mechanism of evolution by natural selection might be. We can now see that the variation he postulated is supported by naturally occurring mutations in DNA … we all have roughly sixty new mutations that were not present in either of our parents.” (The Language of God – Deciphering God’s Instruction Book) Sixty mutations is an extremely small number compared to the total number of DNA in the human nucleus – approximately 3 billion base pairs.
The problem is being overwhelmed by the sheer number of combinations that exist in even a small DNA protein. Each DNA can be only one of four possible bases. Thus if a protein is only 5 DNA bases long the combinations of those 5 bases would by 4 times 4 times 4 times 4 times 4 or 1,024 COMBINATIONS. For every 5 DNA we have over one thousand possible combinations. Every 20 DNA represent over one trillion combinations. All of these combinations can only come about by a mutation to the DNA and it must be passed on to its offspring. Darwinian evolution requires this.
Now let us accept Carl Sagan’s reasoning. What if there were creatures out there. What would it take to mutate ape like creatures into an intelligent civilization capable of scientific exploration? To simplify the problem let us imagine that the only thing missing from an ape like creature anywhere in the universe was the magic “INTELLIGENCE PROTEIN.” Let us imagine that this protein is ONLY 100 DNA BASES LONG.” Let us further imagine that each ape creature offspring had 100 mutations from its parents and once this coincidence of the correct one hundred mutations of the DNA code took place intelligent life would come about populating its world. WHAT WOULD BE REQUIRED TO COVER ALL THE POSSIBLE COMBINATIONS OF ONLY 100 DNA BASES SO AS TO COME UPON THAT 100 DNA SEQUENCE REQUIRED FOR INTELLIGENCE?
The total number of possible combinations in just one hundred DNA would be more than a trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion combinations - a staggering number. This is the down fall for evolutionary process. If it took ONLY ONE YEAR for a creature to be conceived and then become an adult capable of giving birth - ONLY ONE YEAR - we would need one trillion ape like couples all having offspring on a planet. We would simultaneously need this happening on a trillion identical planets around the sun with a trillion identical suns in the galaxy with a trillion identical galaxies in the universe for one trillion years. Please note that the universe has been around for only 14 billion years. All this would be the minimum amount of time to cover - by mutation - all the combinations of only 100 DNA.
If we had 200 DNA - it would take a trillion, trillion, ape like couples with a trillion, trillion, identical planets with a trillion, trillion, identical suns with a trillion, trillion, identical galaxies for a trillion, trillion, years to cover all the combinations. The mathematics defies evolution as a solution.
Some people might read this and object - however their objection must be directed to the mathematical requirement of DNA. Mathematical science demands a hearing. This “intelligence protein” is of course ridiculously small. Whether we are dealing with only one 100 DNA protein or 50 thousand proteins with each protein being one thousand DNA long, only a Divine Intervention could account for Intelligent Life – life created to come to know God and to love Him. However, for those who prefer magic rather than the science of mathematics, they can simply take their magic wand and wave it over the mathematics and cry out “go away” but it cannot go away. Reality is here to stay.
The Lord give you peace.
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