The Case for a Creator - Lee Strobel [118]
The astounding capacity of microscopic DNA to harbor this mountain of information, carefully spelled out in a four-letter chemical alphabet, “vastly exceeds that of any other known system,” said geneticist Michael Denton.
In fact, he said the information needed to build the proteins for all the species of organisms that have ever lived—a number estimated to be approximately one thousand million—“could be held in a teaspoon and there would still be room left for all the information in every book ever written.” 5
DNA serves as the information storehouse for a finely choreographed manufacturing process in which the right amino acids are linked together with the right bonds in the right sequence to produce the right kind of proteins that fold in the right way to build biological systems. The documentary Unlocking the Mystery of Life, which has aired on numerous PBS television stations, describes the elaborate operation this way:
In a process known as transcription, a molecular machine first unwinds a section of the DNA helix to expose the genetic instructions needed to assemble a specific protein molecule. Another machine then copies these instructions to form a molecule known as messenger RNA. When transcription is complete, the slender RNA strand carries the genetic information . . . out of the cell nucleus. The messenger RNA strand is directed to a two-part molecular factory called a ribosome. . . . Inside the ribosome, a molecular assembly line builds a specifically sequenced chain of amino acids. These amino acids are transported from other parts of the cell and then linked into chains often hundreds of units long. Their sequential arrangement determines the type of protein manufactured. When the chain is finished, it is moved from the ribosome to a barrel-shaped machine that helps fold it into the precise shape critical to its function. After the chain is folded into a protein, it is then released and shepherded by another molecular machine to the exact location where it is needed. 6
It was this “absolutely mind-boggling” procedure that helped lead biology professor Dean Kenyon to repudiate the conclusions of his own book on the chemical origin of life and conclude instead that nothing short of an intelligence could have created this intricate cellular apparatus. “This new realm of molecular genetics [is] where we see the most compelling evidence of design on the Earth,” he said. 7
It seemed fitting that when scientists announced that they had finally mapped the three billion codes of the human genome—a project that filled the equivalent of 75,490 pages of The New York Times—divine references abounded. President Clinton said scientists were “learning the language in which God created life,” while geneticist Francis S. Collins, head of the Human Genome Project, said DNA was “our own instruction book, previously known only to God.”8
Are such public bows to a Creator merely a polite social custom, meant only as a nodding courtesy to a predominantly theistic country? Or does the bounty of information in DNA really warrant the conclusion that an intelligent designer must have infused genetic material with its protein-building instructions? Are there any naturalistic processes that can account for the appearance of biological data in the earliest cells?
I knew where to go to get answers. One of the country’s leading experts on origin-of-life issues, who has written extensively on the implications of the information in DNA, resides in Washington state. He and I had already discussed the intersection of faith and science for Chapter Four of this book; now it was time to sit down with him again, this time in his new quarters at the Discovery Institute in downtown Seattle.
INTERVIEW #7: STEPHEN