The Case for a Creator - Lee Strobel [112]
“Cells are constantly getting rid of old stuff and manufacturing new components, and these components are designed to work in one room but not others. Most new components are made at a central location in the cell on things called ribosomes.”
Denton has described the ribosome, a collection of some fifty large molecules containing more than one million atoms, as an automated factory that can synthesize any protein that it is instructed to make by DNA. Given the correct genetic information, in fact, it can construct any protein-based biological machine, including another ribosome, regardless of the complexity. Denton marveled:
It is astonishing to think that this remarkable piece of machinery, which possesses the ultimate capacity to construct every living thing that has ever existed on Earth, from a giant redwood to the human brain, can construct all its own components in a matter of minutes and . . . is of the order of several thousand million million times smaller than the smallest piece of functional machinery ever constructed by man. 11
“Not only is the ribosome amazing,” Behe said, “but now you’re faced with the challenge of getting these new components into the right rooms where they can operate. In order to do that, you need to have another complicated system, just like you need a lot of things in place for a Greyhound bus to take someone from Philadelphia to Pittsburgh.
“First of all, you’ve got to have molecular trucks, which are enclosed and have motors attached to them. You’ve got to have little highways for them to travel along. You’ve got to be able to identify which components are supposed to go into which truck—after all, it doesn’t do any good if you just grab any protein that comes along, because each one needs to go to a specific room. So there has to be a signal attached to the protein—sort of a ticket—to let the protein onto the right molecular truck. The truck has to know where it’s going, which means having a signal on the truck itself and a complementary signal on the compartment where the truck is supposed to unload its cargo.
“When the truck arrives where it’s supposed to go, it’s kind of like a big ocean liner that has crossed from London to New York. It pulls up at the dock and everyone’s waving—but, oops, they forgot the gang plank. Now what are you going to do? You see, you’ve got to have a way for the cargo to get out of the truck and into the compartment, and it turns out this is an active process that involves other components recognizing each other, physically opening things up, and allowing the material to go inside.
“So you’ve got numerous components, all of which have to be in place or nothing works. If you don’t have the signal, if you don’t have the truck, you’re pretty much out of luck. Now, does this microscopic transportation system sound like something that self-assembled by gradual modifications over the years? I don’t see how it could have been. To me, it has all the earmarks of being designed.”
THE BLOOD-CLOTTING CASCADE
There was a pause in our conversation as my mind processed the stupefying complexity of the cilium, flagellum, and intracellular transport system. As I began to formulate my next line of questioning, Behe noticed a Band-Aid on one of my fingers, covering a cut I had received while picking up pieces of broken glass the previous day.
“Irreducible complexity is a very relevant topic,” he commented as he gestured toward the bandage. “An irreducibly complex system just saved your life.”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“Blood clotting,” he said. “If your blood hadn’t clotted in the right place and in the right amount and at the right time,