DNA: The Tiny Code That's Toppling Evolution

The first was the successful ascent of Mt. Everest, the highest mountain in the world. Sir Edmund Hillary and his guide, Tenzing Norgay, reached the summit that year, an accomplishment that's still considered the ultimate feat for mountain climbers. Since then, more than a thousand mountaineers have made it to the top, and each year hundreds more attempt it.

Yet the second great achievement of 1953 has had a greater impact on the world. Each year, many thousands join the ranks of those participating in this accomplishment, hoping to ascend to fame and fortune.

It was in 1953 that James Watson and Francis Crick achieved what appeared impossible—discovering the genetic structure deep inside the nucleus of our cells. We call this genetic material DNA, an abbreviation for deoxyribonucleic acid.

The discovery of the double-helix structure of the DNA molecule opened the floodgates for scientists to examine the code embedded within it. Now, more than half a century after the initial discovery, the DNA code has been deciphered—although many of its elements are still not well understood.

What has been found has profound implications regarding Darwinian evolution, the theory taught in schools all over the world that all living beings have evolved by natural processes through mutation and natural selection.

As scientists began to decode the human DNA molecule, they found something quite unexpected—an exquisite 'language' composed of some 3 billion genetic letters. "One of the most extraordinary discoveries of the twentieth century," says Dr. Stephen Meyer, director of the Center for Science and Culture at the Discovery Institute in Seattle, Wash., "was that DNA actually stores information—the detailed instructions for assembling proteins—in the form of a four-character digital code" (quoted by Lee Strobel, The Case for a Creator, 2004, p. 224).

It is hard to fathom, but the amount of information in human DNA is roughly equivalent to 12 sets of The Encyclopaedia Britannica—an incredible 384 volumes" worth of detailed information that would fill 48 feet of library shelves!

Yet in their actual size—which is only two millionths of a millimeter thick—a teaspoon of DNA, according to molecular biologist Michael Denton, could contain all the information needed to build the proteins for all the species of organisms that have ever lived on the earth, and "there would still be enough room left for all the information in every book ever written" (Evolution: A Theory in Crisis, 1996, p. 334).

Who or what could miniaturize such information and place this enormous number of 'letters' in their proper sequence as a genetic instruction manual? Could evolution have gradually come up with a system like this?

Let's first consider some of the characteristics of this genetic 'language.' For it to be rightly called a language, it must contain the following elements: an alphabet or coding system, correct spelling, grammar (a proper arrangement of the words), meaning (semantics) and an intended purpose.

Scientists have found the genetic code has all of these key elements. "The coding regions of DNA," explains Dr. Stephen Meyer, "have exactly the same relevant properties as a computer code or language" (quoted by Strobel, p. 237, emphasis in original).

The only other codes found to be true languages are all of human origin. Although we do find that dogs bark when they perceive danger, bees dance to point other bees to a source and whales emit sounds, to name a few examples of other species" communication, none of these have the composition of a language. They are only considered low-level communication signals.

The only types of communication considered high-level are human languages, artificial languages such as computer and Morse codes and the genetic code. No other communication system has been found to contain the basic characteristics of a language.

Bill Gates, founder of Microsoft, commented that "DNA is like a software program, only much more complex than anything we've ever devised."

Can you imagine something more intricate than the most complex program running on a supercomputer being devised by accident through evolution—no matter how much time, how many mutations and how much natural selection are taken into account?

Recent studies in information theory have come up with some astounding conclusions—namely, that information cannot be considered in the same category as matter and energy. It's true that matter or energy can carry information, but they are not the same as information itself.

For instance, a book such as Homer's Iliad contains information, but is the physical book itself information? No, the materials of the book—the paper, ink and glue contain the contents, but they are only a means of transporting it.

If the information in the book was spoken aloud, written in chalk or electronically reproduced in a computer, the information does not suffer qualitatively from the means of transporting it. "In fact the content of the message," says professor Phillip Johnson, "is independent of the physical makeup of the medium" (Defeating Darwinism by Opening Minds, 1997, p. 71).

The same principle is found in the genetic code. The DNA molecule carries the genetic language, but the language itself is independent of its carrier. The same genetic information can be written in a book, stored in a compact disk or sent over the Internet, and yet the quality or content of the message has not changed by changing the means of conveying it.

As George Williams puts it: "The gene is a package of information, not an object. The pattern of base pairs in a DNA molecule specifies the gene. But the DNA molecule is the medium, it's not the message" (quoted by Johnson, p. 70).

In addition, this type of high-level information has been found to originate only from an intelligent source.

As Lee Strobel explains: "The data at the core of life is not disorganized, it's not simply orderly like salt crystals, but it's complex and specific information that can accomplish a bewildering task—the building of biological machines that far outstrip human technological capabilities" (p. 244).

For instance, the precision of this genetic language is such that the average mistake that is not caught turns out to be one error per 10 billion letters. If a mistake occurs in one of the most significant parts of the code, which is in the genes, it can cause a disease such as sickle-cell anemia. Yet even the best and most intelligent typist in the world couldn't come close to making only one mistake per 10 billion letters—far from it.

So to believe that the genetic code gradually evolved in Darwinian style would break all the known rules of how matter, energy and the laws of nature work. In fact, there has not been found in nature any example of one information system inside the cell gradually evolving into another functional information program.

Michael Behe, a biochemist and professor at Pennsylvania's Lehigh University, explains that genetic information is primarily an instruction manual and gives some examples.

He writes: "Consider a step-by-step list of [genetic] instructions. A mutation is a change in one of the lines of instructions. So instead of saying, "Take a 1/4-inch nut," a mutation might say, "Take a 3/8-inch nut." Or instead of "Place the round peg in the round hole," we might get "Place the round peg in the square hole" . . . What a mutation cannot do is change all the instructions in one step—say, [providing instructions] to build a fax machine instead of a radio" (Darwin's Black Box, 1996, p. 41).

We therefore have in the genetic code an immensely complex instruction manual that has been majestically designed by a more intelligent source than human beings.

Even one of the discoverers of the genetic code, the agnostic and recently deceased Francis Crick, after decades of work on deciphering it, admitted that "an honest man, armed with all the knowledge available to us now, could only state that in some sense, the origin of life appears at the moment to be almost a miracle, so many are the conditions which would have had to have been satisfied to get it going" (Life Itself, 1981, p. 88, emphasis added).

It is good to remember that, in spite of all the efforts of all the scientific laboratories around the world working over many decades, they have not been able to produce so much as a single human hair. How much more difficult is it to produce an entire body consisting of some 100 trillion cells!

Up to now, Darwinian evolutionists could try to counter their detractors with some possible explanations for the complexity of life. But now they have to face the information dilemma: How can meaningful, precise information be created by accident—by mutation and natural selection? None of these contain the mechanism of intelligence, a requirement for creating complex information such as that found in the genetic code.

Darwinian evolution is still taught in most schools as though it were fact. But it is increasingly being found wanting by a growing number of scientists. "As recently as twenty-five years ago," says former atheist Patrick Glynn, "a reasonable person weighing the purely scientific evidence on the issue would likely have come down on the side of skepticism [regarding a Creator]. That is no longer the case." He adds: "Today the concrete data point strongly in the direction of the God hypothesis. It is the simplest and most obvious solution . . ." (God: The Evidence, 1997, pp. 54-55, 53).

Evolution tells us that through chance mutations and natural selection, living things evolve. Yet to evolve means to gradually change certain aspects of some living thing until it becomes another type of creature, and this can only be done by changing the genetic information.

So what do we find about the genetic code? The same basic quality of information exists in a humble bacteria or a plant as in a person. A bacterium has a shorter genetic code, but qualitatively it gives instructions as precisely and exquisitely as that of a human being. We find the same prerequisites of a language—alphabet, grammar and semantics—in simple bacteria and algae as in man.

Each cell with genetic information, from bacteria to man, according to molecular biologist Michael Denton, consists of "artificial languages and their decoding systems, memory banks for information storage and retrieval, elegant control systems regulating the automated assembly of parts and components, error fail-safe and proof-reading devices utilized for quality control, assembly processes involving the principle of prefabrication and modular construction . . . [and a] capacity not equalled in any of our most advanced machines, for it would be capable of replicating its entire structure within a matter of a few hours" (Denton, p. 329).

So how could the genetic information of bacteria gradually evolve into information for another type of being, when only one or a few minor mistakes in the millions of letters in that bacterium's DNA can kill it?

Again, evolutionists are uncharacteristically silent on the subject. They don't even have a working hypothesis about it. Lee Strobel writes: "The six feet of DNA coiled inside every one of our body's one hundred trillion cells contains a four-letter chemical alphabet that spells out precise assembly instructions for all the proteins from which our bodies are made . . . No hypothesis has come close to explaining how information got into biological matter by naturalistic means" (Strobel, p. 282).

Werner Gitt, professor of information systems, puts it succinctly: "The basic flaw of all evolutionary views is the origin of the information in living beings. It has never been shown that a coding system and semantic information could originate by itself [through matter] . . . The information theorems predict that this will never be possible. A purely material origin of life is thus [ruled out]" (Gitt, p. 124).

Besides all the evidence we have covered for the intelligent design of DNA information, there is still one amazing fact remaining—the ideal number of genetic letters in the DNA code for storage and translation.

Moreover, the copying mechanism of DNA, to meet maximum effectiveness, requires the number of letters in each word to be an even number. Of all possible mathematical combinations, the ideal number for storage and transcription has been calculated to be four letters.

This is exactly what has been found in the genes of every living thing on earth—a four-letter digital code. As Werner Gitt states: "The coding system used for living beings is optimal from an engineering standpoint. This fact strengthens the argument that it was a case of purposeful design rather that a [lucky] chance" (Gitt, p. 95).

Back in Darwin's day, when his book On the Origin of Species was published in 1859, life appeared much simpler. Viewed through the primitive microscopes of the day, the cell appeared to be but a simple blob of jelly or uncomplicated protoplasm. Now, almost 150 years later, that view has changed dramatically as science has discovered a virtual universe inside the cell.

"It was once expected," writes Professor Behe, "that the basis of life would be exceedingly simple. That expectation has been smashed. Vision, motion, and other biological functions have proven to be no less sophisticated than television cameras and automobiles. Science has made enormous progress in understanding how the chemistry of life works, but the elegance and complexity of biological systems at the molecular level have paralyzed science's attempt to explain their origins" (Behe, p. x).

Dr. Meyer considers the recent discoveries about DNA as the Achilles" heel of evolutionary theory. He observes: "Evolutionists are still trying to apply Darwin's nineteenth-century thinking to a twenty-first century reality, and it's not working ... I think the information revolution taking place in biology is sounding the death knell for Darwinism and chemical evolutionary theories" (quoted by Strobel, p. 243).

Dr. Meyer's conclusion? "I believe that the testimony of science supports theism. While there will always be points of tension or unresolved conflict, the major developments in science in the past five decades have been running in a strongly theistic direction" (ibid., p. 77).

Dean Kenyon, a biology professor who repudiated his earlier book on Darwinian evolution—mostly due to the discoveries of the information found in DNA—states: "This new realm of molecular genetics (is) where we see the most compelling evidence of design on the Earth" (ibid., p. 221).

Just recently, one of the world's most famous atheists, Professor Antony Flew, admitted he couldn't explain how DNA was created and developed through evolution. He now accepts the need for an intelligent source to have been involved in the making of the DNA code.

"What I think the DNA material has done is show that intelligence must have been involved in getting these extraordinary diverse elements together," he said (quoted by Richard Ostling, "Leading Atheist Now Believes in God," Associated Press report, Dec. 9, 2004).

Although written thousands of years ago, King David's words about our marvelous human bodies still ring true. He wrote: "For You formed my inward parts, You covered me in my mother's womb. I will praise You, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made . . . My frame was not hidden from You, when I was made in secret, and skillfully wrought. . ." (Psalm 139:13-15, emphasis added).

Where does all this leave evolution? Michael Denton, an agnostic scientist, concludes: "Ultimately the Darwinian theory of evolution is no more nor less than the great cosmogenic myth of the twentieth century" (Denton, p. 358).

All of this has enormous implications for our society and culture. Professor Johnson makes this clear when he states: "Every history of the twentieth century lists three thinkers as preeminent in influence: Darwin, Marx and Freud. All three were regarded as 'scientific' (and hence far more reliable than anything 'religious') in their heyday.

"Yet Marx and Freud have fallen, and even their dwindling bands of followers no longer claim that their insights were based on any methodology remotely comparable to that of experimental science. I am convinced that Darwin is next on the block. His fall will be by far the mightiest of the three" (Johnson, p. 113).

Evolution has had its run for almost 150 years in the schools and universities and in the press. But now, with the discovery of what the DNA code is all about, the complexity of the cell, and the fact that information is something vastly different from matter and energy, evolution can no longer dodge the ultimate outcome. The evidence certainly points to a resounding checkmate for evolution! GN

Actually, that would depend on the macro system. Some are more immune, i.e. reduced jitter than others, often in proportion to mass.

The DeBroglie equation gives the wave component of a particles energy. This goes down in proportion to the particle's mass. Thus, electrons are very cloudlike, at least until they smack into something. Protons, 1835 times more massive, tend to act more like little ball-bearings.

The most famous "Geiger counter" experiment never happened: it's Schroedinger's famous dead-and-alive cat. This thought-experiment was used to illustrate in macro terms the "collapse of the wave function."

Many other experiments show the same thing. A sufficiently wave-like particle is essentially everywhere along its wave-front with a certain weighted probability, until it smacks into something. Then it is or was a point-particle at a given place.

Many real experiments have shown this behavior to be mind-bogglingly spooky for those who like things to be one thing or another, preferably neat little balls clacking about.

Making most geologists antidiluvian.

When I was in grad school in the seventies of the last century, I chanced upon an article in Science magazine about evidence for water channels on Mars. The article compared the situation to the evidence for the Spokane Flood put forth by Harlen Bretz in the 1920s. Geologists were indeed "antidiluvian" and Bretz pretty much sacrificed his career to his advocacy of this interpretation. Of course, he was subsequently vindicated.

When I debated Henry Morris as a "local challenger" back in the eighties, I contrasted the satellite photos of the Spokane badlands with those of the Grand Canyon. In the first case, you can see the "braided stream" effect formed by water rushing over a broad area. In the second case you can see the dendritic ( tree-like ) pattern caused by local drainage, clear and visually compelling evidence against the catastrophic formation of the Grand Canyon which many creationists advocate.

Professor Werner Gitt's conclusions from the information found in DNA

In his book In the Beginning Was Information, Dr. Werner Gitt, an expert in information systems, deduces certain conclusions from the information found in DNA. Here is a summary:

Since the DNA code has all the essential characteristics of information, there must have been a sender of this information.

Since the density and complexity of the DNA information is millions of times greater than man's present technology, the sender must be supremely intelligent.

Since the sender must have encoded (stored) the information into the DNA molecule and constructed the molecular biomachines to encode, decode and run the cells, the sender must be purposeful and supremely powerful.

Since information is a nonmaterial entity and cannot originate from matter, the sender must have a nonmaterial component (spirit).

Since information cannot originate from matter and is also created by man, man's nature must have a nonmaterial component (spirit).

Since biological information can only originate from an intelligent sender and all theories of chemical and biological evolution are based on the premise that information comes solely from matter and energy (with no sender), then the theories of chemical and biological evolution are false.

But in the case of abiogenesis, there has been no improvement.

That's not even close to accurate. Many potential discrete steps on the road to cellular life are being explored. Like Urey's experiment, it is rather marginal biological science, occupying the nether world of scientific legitimacy--rather like SETI. However, it is just not remotely true that a sensible set of small stairsteps leading to life well beyond the Urey-Miller experiment have not been discerned.

What is really amusing is that in the Miller-Urey experiment, they were excited, because the results of their experiment produced chemicals that matched a meteor that came to earth. And then it hit them that the meteor was millions of years old (maybe billions), and it still had not progressed beyond their experiment's results (which is basically that they got a few amino acids of mixed chirality).

You're complaining because a meteor has not shown signs of evolutionary behavior?

Actually what we are finding is that even species with very similar morphologies can have drastically different DNA. This has been found with salamanders. Likewise, the marsupial/placental convergence has an almost complete series of animals that were supposedly convergently evolved. If this is true of extant animals, how are we supposed to know if extinct animals are convergent or part of links in a chain.

By looking at the mutational distance of the DNA of their existing closest cousins.

This statement is completely out of touch with the current state of affairs. We have repeatedly worked the mutational evolutionary clock backwards and forwards with astonishing agreement with the main branches of the tree of life.

The only quarrels that exist are way out on the loose leaves of the tree, and they are pretty entertaining, and creationists try to get a lot of mileage out of them, but they are pretty inconsequential. For the main story, along the main branches, where divergence is tallies in hundreds of millions of years, the DNA story has recapitulated the fossil story to a mind-bogglingly accurate degree. This is the fundamental story of biology for the 20th century, and it is dramatically, astonishingly convincing to virtually every working biologist on the planet, for glaringly obvious reasons. Not, aspersions to the contrary notwithstanding, because they are extremely stupid and gullible, or because they are quaking in fear for their jobs, or because they are engaged in a vast left-wing conspiracy to destroy western civilization.

Basically, the original poster is right. RNA world was once a hypothesis, until we figured out that we couldn't even engineer a self-replicating RNA strand.

RNA world is still a hypothesis, and self-replication is a doubtful requirement.

In addition, as we know more about cell biology, we are finding FEWER links between the kingdoms.

Not even remotely close. Every stinkin' one of us critters share fundamental chemical and morphologic identities. We all use the transcriptase-ribosomes-tRNA chain to build and repair, we all procreate thru the machinery of miosis and mitosis. All of us have protoplasm inside phospholipid bags that bear a remarkable similarity of composition. Differentiating up the tree a bit, and specializing what I mean by "we", we all have blood flow systems, we all have chemical signaling systems that use the same chemicals to accomplish the same ends, we virtually all have topologically equivalent overall morphological structure, both grossly, and in fine detail, as appropriate to the degree of DNA-mutational clock separation.

Add to that the fact that some species have alternate DNA codings, and the common origin of all life is getting further away as we know more.

This statement draws a blank from me on two scores. 1) Of course all species have "alternate" DNA coding. 2) A single, unicellular origin of DNA life has not been in the cards since about the year 2000, due largely to Carl Woese's work, which changed the official tree of life, at it's root, displacing Kingdoms as the root of the tree. Distinct, DNA-encapsulating unicellularity was not an instantaneous event, by our current lights, so there is no need to develop a scientific explaination for it.

A system is a set or arrangement of interdependent things or components that are related, form a whole, and serve a common purpose. There are two types of systems: natural and fabricated. Premise: If a system is an interdependent collection of parts that function together as a whole, the removal of one part of that system would cause the system not to function.
A part of that system is removed.
Conclusion: the system would cease to function.

This is a logical and valid deduction from the premise: the whole exists as a collection of interdependent components. The only way the above syllogism could be demonstrated to be unsound is if one of the premises were untrue. If the argument is false, then there's a contradiction in the major premise in that the system wasn't interdependent. In such case, any system that could function without one of its components is not inherently dependent upon the missing component and therefor a simpler system could exist and by definition the system in question wasn't an essential system (as one of the components was superfilous). That's not the issue, and that's not the syllogism I presented. What the irreducible complexity argument makes is that a complex system can not originate from a simpler system on its own by the addition of previously unrelated components such that the newer system will be dependent on the previously unrelated componentes according to the definition of a system.

A good example is the circulatory system. Each and every component of a circulatory system is required and the omission of any component would cause the system to fail (or not to exist in the first place). What about in an embryo? Clearly there's a point where there's no circulatory system. However, the embryo is utterly dependent upon the host (or environment) for the functionality that a circulatory system would provide. According to pure chance, time and natural events, what are the probabilities of such environment occuring, and for sufficient time to allow such organism to develop.

An even deeper question is: would an intermediary organism in such environment, having a semi-formed non-functioning circulatory system, be sufficiently viable on its own whereby it can propagate sufficient number of times whereby time, chance and natural processes will allow sufficient beneficial mutations to occur whereby a fully functional circulatory system will be the net result (upon which ultimately resultant organisms would be utterly dependant)?

If not, then an organism having a functioning circulatory system would be an example of an irreducibly complex system. To compound the matter, additional critical systems are stacked up: nephritic system, lymphatic system, hepatic system, nervous system, etc. each of which in intermediate form would contribute nothing to viability of the host organism (over that of organisms without it) and yet would amount to an enormous amount of essentially dead baggage.

Another good example of an irreducibly complex system is that of reefs. A symbiotic relationship exists where Zooxanthellae, a unicellular yellow-brown - dinoflagellate - algae, live symbiotically in the gastrodermis of corals. Without the nutrients supplied by the zooxanthellea the corals couldn't grow quickly enough to produce reefs, and the coral provides access to light for the zooxanthellae and protection from predators. The two can and do remain as seperate viable entities (both symbiotically and physically), however in all of time both have been in existance they've not symbiotically recombined into a single organism (whereby one cell - asexually - or two (sexually) propagates the entire system). As it is the coral propagate sexually and the algea assexually (and both remain distinct despite the mutual benefit of their symbiosis).

What is it about a TV signal that marks it as artificial? Artificiality, some property that belies intelligence, is a crucial, and somewhat unresolved, concept in SETI. This in and of itself would suggest, I imagine, the artificial origin of any organic compound besides "natural" biological compounds such as DNA and RNA, could be hotly debated.

What will an alien signal be like? The truth is we don't know. Rather than examine a signal for signs of a message, certain assumptions about any received signal are made.

SETI assumptions:

1) persistance of a "signal"
2) Natural signals have a rather broad frequency spectrum, but the artificial ones usually dont
3) the signal would be received at or around a frequency of 1420 MHz - spectral frequency of hydrogen - and therefore a universal reference point for different intelligent species.
4) the signal's power curve will resemble the bell-shaped graph known as a "gaussian over a span of about 12 seconds

That's it. No application of communication theory, or information theory or what not. How are such candidate signals being scientifically assessed with respect to artificial origin and apart from random noise? One thing that is done is application of the Fourier Transform.

In terms of signal processing, the transform takes a time series representation of a signal function and maps it into a frequency spectrum, where w is angular frequency. That is, it takes a function in the time domain into the frequency domain; it is a decomposition of a function into harmonics of different frequencies.

Another technique used is to assess periodic signal components as signature variables describing a problem or event of interest. These components are often buried in a background of extraneous information. Being able to extract a periodic component hidden in noise is one of the most frequent tasks in signal processing. The means whereby a signal buried in noise can be discerned is through use of a detection indicator known as a Coherence Function. The Coherence Function indicates what fraction of the noisy signal’s power can be attributed to the reference signal and a linear process at every frequency point.

What needs to be established is that functional DNA has a greater periodic component or "coherence" than could be attributed to the "random" reference of entropy such as found in an inert snowflake. If indeed it can be demonstrated that higher entropy exists within the structure of DNA than that of a snowflake, and that such entropy can still be attributed to random chance, sufficient time and natural processes, then every artificial thing under the sun is inherently natural. The Hoover Damn is natural in that it naturally had a tendency to form (man only being one of the natural processes involved in its formation).

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DNA: The Tiny Code That's Toppling Evolution

As scientists explore a new universe—the universe inside the cell—they are making startling discoveries of information systems more complex than anything ever devised by humanity's best minds. How did they get there, and what does it mean for the theory of evolution?