Creation Facts of Life (3 page)

Note: You don't have to see the Creator, and you don't have to see the creative act, to recognize evidence of creation.
Even when we don't know who or what the creative agent is, there are cases where "creation" is simply the most logical inference from our scientific observations.

Although the pebble and the arrowhead are made of the same substance, they reflect two radically different kinds of order. The tumbled pebble has the kind of order that results from time and chance operating through weathering and erosion on the inherent properties of matter. Those same factors will eventually destroy not only the pebble, but also the arrowhead, which has the kind of order clearly brought into being by plan and purpose, mind acting on matter.

In a way, the tumbled pebble represents the idea of
evolution.
As I once believed and taught, evolutionists believe that life itself is the result, like the tumbled pebble, of
time, chance, and the inherent properties of matter.
The arrowhead represents the
creation
idea, that living systems have
irreducible properties of organization
that were produced, like the arrowhead, by
plan, purpose, and special acts of creation.

In our daily experience, all of us can differentiate these two kinds of order (inherent and
"exherent"
). On the basis of logic and observation, for example, we recognize that wind-worn rock formations are the products of time, chance, and the inherent properties of matter. Those same techniques (logical inference from scientific observations) convince us that pottery fragments and rock carvings must be the products of plan, purpose, and acts of creation giving matter irreducible properties of organization.

Let's suppose for a moment you are willing to agree, even tentatively and reluctantly, that "creation" (the model, the process, and the products)
can
be studied scientifically. Does that mean you have to be (shudder) a "creationist?" Not at all! Indeed, there were a couple of teachers at a California university convinced, as I am, that creationist ideas can be tested scientifically — but they thought that scientific tests proved them false! So we can agree ahead of time that both classic models of origin, creation and evolution, can be compared on the basis of scientific merit, but that still leaves it up to me to convince you that the bulk of scientific evidence available supports the Bible, not evolution.

So far, we've only agreed to discuss, to "reason together." Now, let's apply these ordinary scientific techniques to the study of living systems. When it comes to the origin of life, which view is the more logical inference from our scientific observations? Time, chance, and the evolution of matter? Or plan, purpose, and special acts of creation?

The Origin of Life: DNA and Protein

The two basic parts of the tumbled pebble and the arrowhead we considered are hard and soft rock. Two basic parts of every living system are DNA and protein.

DNA is the famous molecule of heredity. It's a focus of crime scene investigations, and we often hear news stories about it. This is the molecule that gets passed down from one generation to the next. Each of us starts off as a tiny little ball about the size of a period on a printed page. In that tiny ball, there are over six feet (2m) of DNA all coiled up. All of our physical characteristics (height, skin color, etc.) are "spelled out" in that DNA.

What are proteins? Proteins are the molecules of structure and function. Hair is mostly protein; skin cells are packed full of proteins; the enzymes that break down food and build it up are proteins; the filaments that slide together to make muscles work are proteins.

So DNA and protein are two basic "parts" of every living system. When you get down to a virus, that's all you find — DNA and protein. (In some viruses, RNA substitutes for DNA.) The DNA molecules code for the protein molecules that make us what we are. That same principle applies to all life forms: viruses, plants, and animals, as well as human beings.

My students study all of the details,
³
but DNA and protein molecules are really quite simple in their basic structure. If you can picture a string of pearls, you can picture DNA: it is a chain of repeating units. Figure 2-A is a diagram of a DNA molecule. The parts that look like railroad boxcars are sugar and phosphate groups, and the parts that stick out from each boxcar in the chain are groups called
bases.

Proteins are built in about the same way. Proteins are also chains of repeated units. As shown in Figure 2-B, the links in protein chains are called
amino acids.
In all living things, inherited chains of DNA bases are used to line up chains of amino acids. These amino acid chains are the protein molecules responsible for structure and function. For example, chains of several hundred DNA bases tell the cell how to make a protein called hemoglobin, and that protein functions as the oxygen carrier in red blood cells. In short form,
DNA
®
protein
®
trait,
and that relationship is the physical basis of all life on earth.

Figure 2-A. DNA is built like a string of pearls, whose links (specifically the bases G, C, A, and T) act like alphabet letters that "spell out" hereditary instructions. Figure 2-B. Proteins are chains of amino acids. Each chain coils into a special shape that has some special function: muscle contraction, digestion, oxygen transport, holding skin together, etc.

Now, what about that relationship between DNA and protein? How did it get started? Evolutionists picture a time long ago when the earth might have been quite different. They imagine that fragments of DNA and fragments of protein are produced. These molecules are supposed to "do what comes naturally" over vast periods of time. What's going to happen? Will time, chance, and chemical reactions between DNA and protein automatically produce life?

At first, you might think so. After all, nothing is more natural than a reaction between acids and bases. Perhaps you've used soda (a base) to clean acid from a battery. The fizz is an acid-base reaction. So is using "Tums" to neutralize stomach acid. Nothing is more common than reactions between acids and bases. If you just wait long enough, acid-base reactions will get DNA and protein working together, and life will appear — right? Wrong! Just the opposite.

The problem is that the properties of bases and acids produce the
wrong
relationship for living systems. Acid-base reactions would "scramble up" DNA and protein units in all sorts of "deadly" combinations. These reactions would prevent, not promote, the use of DNA to code protein production. Since use of DNA to code protein production is the basis of all life on earth, these acid-base reactions would
prevent,
not promote, the evolution of life by chemical processes based on the inherent properties of matter.

These wrong reactions have produced serious problems for Stanley Miller, Sidney Fox, and other scientists trying to do experiments to support chemical evolution. Almost all biology books have a picture of Miller's famous spark chamber (Figure 3). In it, Miller used simple raw materials and electric sparks to produce amino acids and other simple molecules — the so-called "building blocks of life." Some newspapers reported that Miller had practically made "life in a test tube."

Miller's experiment was brilliant, and I loved to tell my students about it. Then I came to see there were just three little problems: he had the wrong starting materials, used the wrong conditions, and got the wrong results.

What do I mean by "wrong starting materials"? Miller left out oxygen. Why? Because of the scientific evidence? No. He left it out because he knew oxygen would destroy the very molecules he was trying to produce. It's hard for us to realize how "corrosive" oxygen is, since most modern living things depend on it. But oxygen is so valuable to life precisely because it's so chemically reactive, and aerobic living things today have systems to protect themselves against the harmful effects of oxygen, while using its chemical power to their advantage. (Anaerobic organisms and some viruses are quickly destroyed by contact with oxygen.)

Figure 3. Left to time, chance, and their chemical properties, the bases of DNA and amino acids of proteins would react in ways that would prevent, not promote, the evolution of life. In the same way, reactions among molecules in Miller's famous "spark chamber" would destroy any hope of producing life. Living systems must constantly repair the chemical damage done to them, and when biological order loses out to inherent chemical processes, death results — even though a dead body has all the right molecules in the right places in the right amounts at the right times (almost!).

A.I. Oparin, the Russian biochemist who "fathered" modern views of spontaneous generation or chemical evolution, knew oxygen in the atmosphere would prevent evolution. He also "knew," by faith in Engels' materialistic philosophy (the view that matter is the only reality), that creation was impossible (there was no spiritual dimension). As an act of faith, then, Oparin believed evolution must have occurred, and as a concession to his faith, he left oxygen out. Science has not been kind to that belief. We find oxidized rocks, suggesting an oxygen atmosphere, as deep as we can dig.

Furthermore, methane (CH
₄
) and ammonia (NH
₃
), two prime gases in the Miller spark chamber, could
not
have been present in large amounts. The ammonia would be dissolved in the oceans, and the methane should be found stuck to ancient (deep) sedimentary clays. It's not there! Those who still believe in chemical evolution are aware of these problems (as is Miller himself), so they are simply trying (as yet unsuccessfully) to simulate the origin of life using different starting materials. (Carbon monoxide and hydrogen cyanide are two popular, if unlikely, gases being used today.)

Wrong conditions? Miller used an electric spark to get the gas molecules to combine, and that works. Problem: The same electric spark that puts amino acids together also tears them apart, and it's much better at destroying them than making them, meaning that few, if any, amino acids would actually accumulate in the spark chamber. Miller, a good biochemist, knew that, of course, so he used a common chemist's trick. He drew the products out of the spark chamber and into a "trap" that would save the amino acids from destruction by the same electric spark that made them. Using product removal (the principle of LeChatelier or law of mass action) to increase yield is ordinary chemical practice, but it depends on intervention by informed intelligence. Miller was supposed to be demonstrating that the gases could make the "building blocks of life" all by themselves without any outside help, yet
his
outside, intelligent help was necessary to save the molecules from their destructive chemical fate. (Moreover, creating life in a test tube as a consequence of intelligent design would offer more support to creation than to evolution.)

Wrong results? How could that be? Miller wanted to make amino acids, and he got amino acids (along with sugars and a few other things). How could those results be wrong?

The proteins in living cells are made of just
certain kinds
of amino acids: those that are "alpha" (short) and "left-handed." Miller's "primordial soup" contained many long (beta, gamma, delta) amino acids and equal numbers of both right- and left-handed forms. Problem: Just one long or right-handed amino acid inserted into a chain of short, left-handed amino acids would prevent the coiling and folding necessary for proper protein function. What Miller
actually
produced was a seething brew of potent poisons that would absolutely destroy any hope for the chemical evolution of life.

The "left-handed amino acid problem" is particularly well-known to evolutionists, and several have been trying to solve it. One brilliant researcher, after working unsuccessfully for years on the problem, just smiled and chuckled when asked about it: "Perhaps God is left-handed." He may have been closer to the truth than he realized. From what we know about the chemistry of the molecules involved, it really looks like the molecules could never put themselves together into living cells apart from the careful selection, engineering genius, and deliberate design of the transcendent, creative intelligence we call God!
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