The Vanishing Proofs of Evolution Book by:  Thomas F. Heinze  ·  ©2005  ·  96 pgs.   Go to: Books   Introduction   Chapter 1   Chapter 2   Chapter 3   Chapter 4   Chapter 5   Chapter 6   Chapter 7 Chapter 8

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Chapter 8 Did Life Evolve from Chemicals?

    How Did Life Begin?

What an individual believes on this one subject goes far to determine whether he will believe in God or become an atheist. Like it or not, the answers school books give to this question determine to a large extent, the religion of millions of readers.

Unfortunately, the only possibility most school textbooks consider for the origin of life is natural causes. This is strange because it is contrary to the evidence, and contradicts other pages of the same books. In fact, virtually all biology textbooks say spontaneous generation never happens, that is, living things always come from living things, never from dead chemicals. Here is how one textbook puts it: "new cells always come from existing cells." (1)

This is a statement of one of the most proven scientific principles, the principle of biogenesis. Biology textbooks explain the experiments and the evidence that led to this conclusion, and clearly state that spontaneous generation does not happen. Scientific evidence, both observational and experimental, upholds the basic scientific principle that new life always comes from existing life.

At this point, a transition is made from statements based on scientific evidence to statements based on atheistic speculation. Most textbooks limit themselves to a naturalistic explanation of how life began, and leave out the possibility that the living God created life. To do that, they make the origin of life an exception to the rule that life only comes from life. They postulate that an imaginary first cell was generated spontaneously. In the case of the book quoted above, after having explained the scientific principle of biogenesis they ask: "How, then, did the first cells originate?" They have just shown scientific evidence that spontaneous generation does not happen, when out of the blue, about one page later, they switch and claim that at one time it did happen. Many books try to cover the fact that they are contradicting themselves by changing the name from "spontaneous generation" to "abiogenesis" which comes from roots which mean: "not biogenesis" which is to say that the first life did not come from something living. The only difference between abiogenesis and spontaneous generation is that abiogenesis is claimed to have happened only once. Their teaching that the first life was an exception to the principle of biogenesis is not based on scientific evidence, but on the atheistic belief system that nature is all that there is.

Generally for something to be scientific, it must be observable and repeatable, but the school books generally use a different definition of science when dealing with where the first life came from. It is: "The human activity of seeking natural explanations for what we observe in the world around us." (2)

There are two possible ways life could have begun. The evidence points to design and creation by an intelligent God. The other possibility is that life was generated by nature with no intelligent supervision. Defining science so it excludes any solution except the blind forces of nature is a shrewd philosophic solution to the atheist's scientific problem that the evidence favors creation. By switching to this definition of science, most school books need only consider the "natural alternative" which is against the evidence, against the principle of biogenesis, and against some other laws of science. (3)

Imagine for a moment that you are an atheist. As you step out the front door one morning, there, before your eyes is a brand new Ford parked in your driveway complete with the title and the keys. Where did it come from? The Ford is a product of intelligent design, so, if you use "spontaneous generation by the blind forces of nature" to explain the origin of the Ford, you are going to look foolish. As a result, the definition "science seeks natural explanations" is mostly just applied where it will be an aid to atheism. You can tell the truth about the Ford.

By defining science in a way that excludes from the science books the evidence that life had an intelligent designer and creator it would seem at first glance to exclude half of the evidence regarding the origin of life. In fact, all the valid scientific evidence is excluded! How can I make such a statement? Let me explain.

I started studying the origin of life with the idea of comparing the scientific evidence that favors an intelligent living Creator with that which favors a spontaneous natural origin. I had read a great deal about the subject, so I began the study believing I would find more scientific evidence favoring an intelligent Creator than abiogenesis. I was also influenced by reading the Bible every day. It explains that God created certain categories of living things. I know the living God, and have found Him trustworthy. This increased my expectation that I would find more evidence supporting an intelligent and capable designer/Creator than abiogenesis.

In spite of all this, I was not prepared for what I found! After reading book after book promoting abiogenesis, from school biology textbooks to books written by expert, origin-of-life researchers, it dawned on me that all I had read were thousands of pages of speculation. Not a single book gave even one shred of scientific evidence that life evolved spontaneously from chemicals. I have had a request out on the widely read www.creationism.org for anyone who has any scientific evidence for abiogenesis to let me know, and no one has. Authors who support the position do it with speculation, scenarios, myths, and made-up stories which they substitute for evidence.

Almost unbelievably, many of the letters I receive from atheists show that they have been completely taken in by the substitution of fables for facts. They don't try to weigh the evidence for and against creation by God to see which seems stronger. They are so used to claims supported by made up stories, that they seem to have actually come to believe that any story, no matter how far fetched it is, trumps any amount of solid scientific evidence to the contrary. Be prepared to resist the temptation to treat speculation as better than evidence.

Most textbooks support their claim of abiogenesis with nothing but a manipulative definition of science and made-up stories. Then they censure out the two kinds of valid scientific evidence:

• That abiogenesis could not and did not get life started.

• That God did in fact create life.

Hiding the evidence for creation to sell students on the atheistic idea of where life came from is so contrary to good science it is one of the top reasons why many thinking people now home school, or send their children to Christian schools.

As you read, prepare to be surprised! I will pile evidence upon evidence; first, convincing and easily understood evidence that life was not produced by natural causes, then evidence for an intelligent planner and Creator.

    Were The Materials Available?

You can't make an airplane out of aluminum unless aluminum is available. Reasonable atheists admit that for a first cell to form without a Creator, the materials cells are made of would have to have been available:

"If life indeed started without the help of miracles, the first organisms must have been made of materials that were easily available."4
This obvious fact puts textbook authors who oppose the Creator in a terrible bind. As we will see, in spite of many attempts to make students believe otherwise, cells are made of very large molecules that will not form in nature except when assembled by already living cells. The order of their component parts is not determined by chemical bonds, but by the information they are to carry. DNA and RNA are so complex and hard to construct that scientists can't even make them in the lab!

Let's examine a few of the most popular made-up stories about how life might have begun without a Creator. I give them in the order in which they became popular. Notice that, while each of these stories claims that life was started by a different chemical, not one of these chemicals will form in nature except when made by already living cells. The materials that these stories feature were not available!

    The Myth That Lipids Formed in Nature and Produced The First Life

If you pour a little oil in water and shake it, the oil separates into little round balls called coacervates which look a bit like some cells. Chemists call oils and fats "lipids." Back when microscopes were too crude to reveal the complexity of cells, some thought these tiny bubbles of fat evolved into cells. Here is a school book explanation:

"When mixed with water, certain lipids will form a bubble that is called a coacervate (koh AS uhr vayt) which has a double-layered membrane much like the lipid bilayer of the cell membrane... The early oceans probably contained numerous small lipid coacervates, each one forming and then dispersing. Over millions of years, coacervates that could survive longer by taking in molecules and energy from their surroundings would have become more common than the here-today-gone-tomorrow kind. When a means arose to transfer this ability to "offspring" coacervates, probably through self-replicating RNA, life had begun." (5)

This convincing story is science fiction, and is contrary to the evidence! Both lipids and RNA are too complex to form in nature apart from living cells, so the idea that both formed at the same time, and in the same place with the RNA inside a lipid membrane is also false. Cairns-Smith, one of the most prominent first life researchers, explains that lipids, and the nucleotides which make up RNA, are only formed in the miniature factories of already living cells:

"Though a few organic substances - for instance certain simple amino acids - can form fairly easily under prebiotic conditions, other biochemical building blocks such as nucleotides and lipids, require for their synthesis a 'real factory.' ...The synthesis of these substances involves a series of reactions, each reaction following the previous one in utmost accuracy." (6)

There was a third false statement in the brief biology textbook quote. Did you catch it?

"Over millions of years, coacervates that could survive longer by taking in molecules and energy from their surroundings would have become more common than the here-today-gone-tomorrow kind."

Is this true? Does natural selection work on chemicals to eliminate the less fit lipids? No, it only works on things that can keep track of information, reproduce, and pass the information on to their offspring. (7) While lipid coacervates did not exist till living things made them, they have been around ever since living things started producing them, and they are still the "here-today-gone-tomorrow kind."

Though there was no known source for a lipid membrane before real cells were present to make them, lipids would have been vital to a first cell because cell membranes are made of lipids. The first cell had to have a functioning membrane around it, or the other parts would have been so much loose goo dissolving into the ocean.

A cell's membrane, however, must do much more than keep its parts together. If a cell is to live, its membrane must also let in nourishment, expel wastes, and keep out unwanted materials. Lipids can't do all this on their own. A cell with a membrane that did not also contain pumps, channels, and sensors made of proteins would die because it would let water enter but would keep nourishment out. (8)

    The Myth That Proteins Formed in Nature and Produced Life

In his famous 1953 experiment, Stanley Miller showed that amino acids could be formed under conditions that might have occurred in nature. Amino acids are the building blocks of proteins, the main ingredients of living things. So a story was made up that claimed that amino acids which had formed in nature then came together to form proteins which then formed living cells. One reason amino acids could not have made proteins is that the amino acids must follow one another in a precise order which is determined by information in the cell's DNA, and is different for each protein. Another is that the natural tendency of amino acids in water is to not link to each other and make proteins. The part of the story about amino acids getting together to make proteins, which then got together to make a cell, was made up by some optimist who wanted to believe that Miller's amino acids had made the first life. It is contrary to the way chemistry works, but adding it helped miller's experiment become the most widely publicized origin-of-life experiment of all time.

Before Miller, Oparin had produced "proteinoids," by heating dry amino acids, but they organized into small spheres that will not work in living things. The amino acids in proteins, instead, are hooked together one behind the next like cars in a train, each in a specific order not determined by the chemical tendencies of the amino acids, but by the information in the DNA. The order of its amino acids gives each protein its own specific properties.

Well known origin of life researcher Leslie Orgel contributed a chapter, "The Origin of Biological Information" to the book, Life's Origin. Orgel begins:

"Organic chemists should have invented the computer scientist's motto, 'Garbage in, garbage out.' " (9)

Orgel explains that if chemists have garbage rather than a pure compound going in, garbage will come out. While textbooks use Miller's famous experiment to convince students that chemicals built up to become life, Orgel uses the same experiment to show the extreme difficulty of keeping garbage out of the chemicals which would have been needed for living cells. Orgel writes: "For example, Miller's classic experiment ...produces tar along with a percent or two of a complex mixture of racemic amino acids ...." (10)

Orgel is saying three things:

• Miller's experiment, the most famous of all origin of life experiments, produced garbage (the tar) mixed with a percent or two of amino acids which are the building blocks of proteins, the main ingredients of cells.

• The amino acids that made up that percent or two were "Racemic," which means they were a mixture of half right and half left handed amino acids. Proteins will not work in cells unless all their amino acids are left handed. All amino acids produced in nature outside of already living cells are mixed left, and right-handed, and will not work in proteins. Even if there had been a way to produce all left-handed amino acids, they would have had to be used right away, because over time, they break down to half-and-half.(11) Half-and-half won't work, but neither will 90% left handed amino acids, or 99%. Living things require pure left-handed amino acids.(12) The percent or two of amino acids that were produced were nicer garbage, but still garbage because they were racemic rather than all left-handed, and would not work in living cells.

Orgel points these things out to help us understand that unless there is a way that nature can produce all pure left handed amino acids, no useful proteins could have been made. In experiments like Miller's, and in all of nature except in living cells, no pure left handed amino acids, or proteins are formed. In fact, even when scientists buy all pure, left-handed amino acids at a chemical supply house and make a perfect organic broth, no proteins are produced. Even some school books now admit:

"Scientists have not been able to cause amino acids dissolved in water to join together to form proteins. The energy-requiring chemical reactions that join amino acids are reversible and do not occur spontaneously in water. However, most scientists no longer argue that the first proteins assembled spontaneously. Instead, they now tell us that the initial macromolecules were composed of RNA, and that RNA later catalyzed the formation of proteins." (13)

    The Myth That The First Living Cell Was Started by RNA

Orgel used his explanation of Miller's famous experiment as an example to point us to the almost infinitely more difficult problem of how the available garbage could have produced the first RNA and then the first cell. He asks:

"How could chemistry on the primitive Earth proceed in such a messy way, producing information rich living cells, those exquisitely designed chemical factories, from such unpromising starting materials? This is the central and as yet largely unanswered question facing investigators on the origin of life." (14)

Andrew Knoll, a professor at Harvard, shows that the fact that no RNA was available, nor even the nucleotides from which it is made, makes RNA a doubtful candidate for maker of the first life:

"Worst of all, even if we could produce the right components, combining them to form nucleotides, the building blocks of nucleic acids, is daunting. To date, no one has figured out how to do it."

"There is still another difficulty. Nucleotides are chiral molecules, which is to say that they come in two forms which are mirror images of each other-like your hands. RNA can be built from right-handed or left-handed molecules, but mixed chains won't grow. How then could RNA—which in cells consists exclusively of right handed nucleotides — have emerged from a fifty-fifty mixture of left- and right-handed building blocks? Again, no one knows. The problems are so difficult that many researchers have given up on the idea that RNA was the primordial molecule of life." (16)

While discussing comparative anatomy, evolutionists generally claim that all living things descended from a common ancestor because all have the same basic system of DNA information that controls the life of the cell. They seem not to notice that their claim that the first life came from RNA contradicts their common ancestor claim. The claim that, before life had an RNA-based system, it had a simpler system, makes the contradiction even worse.

Most stick with the made-up story that RNA made the first living cell, claiming it formed on clay, which served as a template on which RNA was built. They cite experiments in which a scientist placed fresh nucleotide building blocks of RNA on clay daily, and some connected to form short strings.(17) When this information filters down to the school book level, it often sounds like clay puts nucleotides together to form real RNA. It does not, and if it did, finding a scientist who would have been able to place fresh nucleotides on the clay every day before there were any living cells would have been a bit difficult because:

• RNA is so hard to make that intelligent scientists who try really hard can't even arrange chemicals to make its nucleotide building blocks.

• Living cells are the only things in nature that can produce nucleotides.

• If nucleotides did occur, they could not form RNA because all must be right-handed and half of any naturally occurring nucleotides would have been left-handed. (18)

Many textbooks strip out these facts and speculate that RNA did form once from chemicals in nature. Some school textbooks stray so far from the truth as to claim that experiments like that of Stanley Miller produced nucleotides along with the amino acids. (19)

One textbook tells innocent students a much worse whopper: "...RNA molecules can form spontaneously in water..." (20) Why do textbook authors use false statements like these to convince students that life started without a Creator? Surely, they would not falsify evidence if there were real evidence supporting their position.

It saddens me to see atheists use my tax dollars to spread their religion in public school books. It hurts me even more when they spread it by deceiving innocent kids with false statements. It makes me sadder still that our government permits the establishment of atheism as the religion of our public schools and universities.

Students and their teachers have no idea that there is no evidence to back up the atheistic claims about the origin of life. They trust their textbooks and have no easy way to check up on them. Giving them copies of this book is one of the few ways you and I have to break the stranglehold of atheism on our schools.

To be fair, some textbook authors probably did not know their statements were false. They were convinced by other biology textbooks. After a made-up story finds its way into older biology books, for example the false story that nucleotides form spontaneously, (21) it finds its way into newer books such as Holt, Biology, Visualizing Life, 1998, (page 192), which adds another claim, that not just nucleotides, but also RNA would form spontaneously on early earth, (page 193.) If textbook authors feel it is okay to support their position with made-up stories, they should be up front and mention the difficulty their chosen viewpoint has with the evidence from science.

The authors of the book Rare Earth believe in abiogenesis and engage in atheistic speculation about life in space, but they do mention the scientific problems with RNA production:

"Some of the steps leading to the synthesis of DNA and RNA can be duplicated in the laboratory, others cannot. ...The problem is that complex molecules such as DNA (and RNA) cannot simply be assembled in a glass jar by combining various chemicals. Such organic molecules also tend to break down when heated..."

I have looked in vain for such admissions in high school biology books. Even textbooks that avoid obviously untrue statements often slant their presentations to lead students to believe that RNA did form spontaneously from chemicals. Sometimes they do this in ways that first life researchers have found over and over again do not work.

Many adults were first convinced by textbook claims that life started from lipid coacervates. They were later convinced that life came from proteins instead. Now they are even more convinced that it came from RNA. At each stage, they had faith that whatever they were being taught was true science. Their faith, however, was never based on scientific evidence, but on bad science and made up stories. Why wouldn't they believe? The evidence that God created life is consistently censored out of the textbooks, and few find it elsewhere.

    A Tough Job for Primitive RNA

After textbooks have told the story that a primitive RNA had formed, they tell what it must have been like. Since no cell existed yet, the imagined primitive RNA is claimed to have performed many of the cell's functions all by itself. We are taught that it self replicated, catalyzed the formation of proteins, and went on to produce DNA. Real RNA is not capable of doing any of these things.

Catalysts speed up chemical reactions. The ability of the cell to catalyze reactions with great efficiency is one of the major reasons cells can make the necessary complex molecules. Their production requires many steps, one after another, in order, very rapidly. The catalytic ability of modern RNA is very limited. Protein catalysts are often millions of times faster,23 but neither proteins nor modern RNA can produce proteins without the cooperation of a living cell. The claim that primitive RNA could do it alone, is exaggerated. But if RNA could make proteins:

• How could it know to make all the specific proteins needed for the first cell, and only those?

• Why make the hard ones?

• Why would it not just keep making more copies of one easy protein?

There is an even greater problem. If natural selection could work on primitive RNA, and make it successful at catalyzing the formation of the needed chemicals, why would the RNA at that point quit catalyzing these reactions, invent proteins, and turn this job over to them? It wouldn't, and not just because natural selection does not lead things to replace themselves with totally different substances, but also because of the complex ways proteins work.

Each protein will connect and function in only one place in its cell, so something must get it to that place. Dr. Guenter Blobel received the Nobel prize for discovering the address tags which permit the cell to send each protein to the one place in the cell where it will work. (24)

While a protein is on the way to the only spot where it will function with the proteins around it, it must fold to fit perfectly with the other proteins that will be its neighbors. Unless each protein is properly addressed and folded, it is not only useless, but it will usually cause a genetic disease. IBM has just built the world's most powerful super computer to help scientists find out how cells fold each protein into the unique shape that will let it fit with the surrounding proteins. IBM explains:

"The scientific community considers protein folding one of the most significant 'grand challenges' — a fundamental problem in science or engineering that has broad economic and scientific impact and whose solution can be advanced only by applying high-performance computing technologies.

"Proteins control all cellular processes in the human body. Comprising strings of amino acids that are joined like links of a chain, a protein folds into a highly complex, three-dimensional shape that determines its function. Any change in shape dramatically alters the function of a protein, and even the slightest change in the folding process can turn a desirable protein into a disease." (25)

The plot thickens: For a cell to live, it is not enough for its proteins to be sent to the right places and folded correctly on the way, the cell must also maintain the right amount of each protein. This requires an elaborate control system that turns on and off every activity of the cell at the right time. (26) Systems to control proteins would have been of no use until proteins existed, but if RNA could produce proteins before the controls were in place to turn them off, it would have jammed the cell so full of the first protein it started making, that it would have killed the cell.

If proteins were produced by RNA as atheists claim, we should expect:

• Mostly the proteins which were easiest to make.
• Proteins which would not fold properly.
• Proteins without the proper address tags.
• Lethal quantities of any proteins whose production the cell was not yet programmed to turn off at the right moment.
• Proteins (and other chemicals) not useful to that cell.
• Proteins with mixed right and left handed amino acids.

    How Long?

Even atheists have long recognized that the odds against abiogenesis are astronomical. For years, however, they thought enough time was available to reduce the odds against it happening. Almost no informed atheists believe that today! Why?

• Lipids, proteins, DNA, and RNA all break down over time. In addition, proteins, DNA, and RNA gradually switch over to become half right, and half left-handed. Therefore, huge periods of time would not build up large quantities of any of the substances cells are made of, even if they could form in nature.

• Evolutionists say fossil bacteria have been dated at 3.55 billion years ago, not long after they believe earth cooled enough to support life around 3.8 billion years ago. (27)

Many evolutionists believe that after a first cell formed, it must have taken hundreds of millions of years of evolution to produce a bacteria complex enough to leave the oldest fossils. Why? The fossils they have dated as older than any others look identical to some modern bacteria living today. (28) The time left for the formation of the first cell would have been so short that Nobel prize winner de Duve has written:

"It is now generally agreed that if life arose spontaneously by natural processes... it must have arisen fairly quickly, more in a matter of millennia or centuries, perhaps even less, than in millions of years." (29)

Other evolutionists understand the impossibility of life having formed on earth, and instead claim that life came here from a planet off in space, but the problems of evolving life here would all have been present there also. Space only adds extra problems: the extremely long, cold trip through lethal radiation in the vacuum of space, and the hot, violent impact.

If you still believe one of the made-up stories about lipids, proteins, or RNA having formed the first life without the help of a Creator, you can put the story into proper perspective by adding this four word introduction: "Once upon a time!"

If you believe life arrived on earth from a planet somewhere in space, three more words must be added to the introduction: "Once upon a time, far far away!"

    Information

The primary purpose of DNA and RNA is to store and transmit information. In computer terms, we can think of DNA and RNA as being hardware, while the information that they contain is software. Both cells and computers have instructions that direct their operation. Where did these instructions come from? And where did the data come from, the information for making and managing each of the cell's proteins, for example.

Atheistic origin-of-life researchers have been hard at work for years trying to find a way that the hardware could have come about naturally. Their studies have instead uncovered more obstacles to the spontaneous generation of RNA or DNA. Judging by their writings, origin-of-life researchers mostly sidestep the software problem. "If we can only show that the hardware had no Creator," some seem to hope, "the software would have written itself." Others favor ideas that the information came from clay, or primordial soup, or sunlight, but how could any of these have contained the information to make a cell? No computer writes its own software. Programmers write it, then we enter our own data. Information comes only from minds, never from matter or energy:

• When archeologists dig up ancient books or inscriptions, they know it did not write itself. Someone wrote it.30 I know of no scientist who contradicts this, yet even the simplest cells have more information than any ancient book.

• The SETI Institute uses huge radio telescopes to search for extraterrestrial intelligence. Their scientists know that if they find an intelligent message coming from space, it will prove that we are not alone in the universe, but there is other intelligent life out there. (31) The SETI scientists, including the ones who are atheists, count on there being no exceptions to the fact that information always comes from intelligent beings.

DNA does not make proteins, or carry on other day to day activities of the cell; it contains the information that tells the rest of the cell how to do it. When the cell makes a protein, a bit of the information is copied from the DNA to RNA. Since RNA is not quite the same chemically as DNA, the same information is coded a bit differently as it is copied so the information is unchanged. Unless the ability to copy the DNA information in RNA language was available, the first cells that used both DNA and RNA would have died because they could not transmit information correctly. When the RNA arrives with the information necessary to make a protein, left-handed amino acids are lined up in the proper order for that specific protein, and then linked together. Like giving the same message in English, Spanish, and Chinese, the information for making a specific protein is the same when it is carried by DNA, as when it is carried by RNA, and when it is expressed in protein.

None of the steps in transferring the information would have benefited the cell without the others, so none of them could have been gradually produced through natural selection. All had to be present at the same time for the first cell to function. Atheists believe in unbelievably lucky accidents. I believe in God.

Atheists believe that cells evolved from chemicals, so they have strong motivation to believe that the first cell was really simple. Hoping to prove their point, they have done research to see how few genes a cell could have gotten by with and still had life: According to Lurquin, "The number is about 300..." (32) Spetner says that if the symbols for the genome of a bacterium were printed in ordinary type, it would fill a 1000 page book. (33) Perhaps you want to argue that these estimates are high, that the first cell had less pages. The evolutionist's problem is not how much information, but that no cell could function without some information. Where did it get it?

To make it sound like this is not a problem, evolutionists write me with exotic new definitions of "information" that do not involve this kind of information. Some equate the information in DNA to the tendency of the atoms in minerals to crystallize in one or a few particular patterns. When you study mineralogy, you learn the ways each mineral crystallizes because that is how minerals are identified. Salt does not change its program so it can crystallize like quartz. Unlike crystals, DNA and RNA can carry whatever message. In this they resemble a blank sheet of paper more than a crystal. They can, for example, carry the information for making many different proteins.

The principle dictionary definition of "information" is, "knowledge communicated or received..." The second is "knowledge gained through study..." (34)

Cells contain and use knowledgeable instructions that work perfectly for making even the cell parts that scientists can't yet make in the lab. When, after years of study, an intelligent scientist decodes the instructions and makes the material of a particular cell part in his own laboratory, will he have shown that no intelligence was necessary? Hardly! He will have added more evidence that a very intelligent creator used real information.

Every cell makes many complex substances that are never put together by chemicals outside of cells. Why? Because its DNA contains the instructions for making these complex substances, and other parts of the cell follow those instructions. Such complex information comes only from minds. God is very smart!

    Machines

In every case in which the origin of a machine is known, it was designed by an intelligent designer. This is true of the space shuttle but it is also true of your bicycle.

Cells are full of tiny functioning machines called molecular machines. Their different parts work together to accomplish things that no one part could do by itself. Some of the machines are like tiny but very efficient motors that spin things. Others transport things to other parts of the cell. The ribosomes are tiny machines that link amino acids together to make proteins. To link them, several kinds of proteins work together with RNA following the directions contained in the DNA.

If too much or too little of a protein were made it would kill the cell, so other kinds of machines regulate the process by turning protein production on and off. One of these uses specific stretches of DNA called regulatory DNA sequences. The DNA, however, cannot turn protein production on or off by itself. Each regulatory DNA sequence works with a specific protein that folds perfectly to fit the correct spot on the DNA, and work with it. DNA and protein working together form a machine that regulates the production of a protein. They form a switch that turns a gene for that protein on or off at the right times. (35) Neither the regulatory DNA sequences nor the regulatory proteins can do the job without the other.

To get to the right spot on the DNA, each of the regulatory proteins had to have a fully functioning address tag that would send it to the only spot on the DNA where it would fit and function. On the way, it had to be folded correctly. Otherwise it would not fit when it got there.

Now add this vital evidence: If the machine which makes proteins had been able to make them before the one that regulates them was in place, the runaway production would have killed the cell. The regulator, in turn, is half protein, and would have been useless until its protein existed. The cell could not work until both protein production and the control system were up and running. Many of the cell's other machines are equally essential if the cell is to live. Behe quotes Darwin as saying,

"If it could be demonstrated that any complex organ existed which could not possibly have been formed by numerous, successive, slight modifications, my theory would absolutely break down." (36)

In addition, none of these machines could function after the first generation if not for the machines involved in untwisting and dividing the DNA to allow the cell to reproduce. If every other machine in the cell worked, but the cell membrane lacked the protein pumps and channels which allow the cell to take in nutrients, the cell would die and none of its other machines would matter.

With time and research we could add machine after machine to the list of machines which can only work if other machines are working. If an imagined first cell lacked any one of the many essential machines, it would not work. The machines are interdependent. Therefore the machines could not have accumulated gradually. For a first cell to live, a certain number of its machines would have to have been brought on line all together.

Think this through: If just one tiny but essential part of any essential machine was lacking, that machine would not work, and the cell could not live. Compare it to an airplane. Take just one wing off an airplane and it won't fly, but even if it has both wings it won't fly if it lacks the steering mechanism. Here is my point: If all the main components are present, but the steering mechanism lacks just one small but necessary part, the airplane won't work. Just as an airplane designer had to include all the essential parts, so did the cell designer.

We do not know of any complex machine whose parts accumulated gradually with no one directing the process. This is evidence. Those who claim the first cell was an exception honor their presuppositions above the evidence. School books that replace scientific evidence with made-up stories are dumbing down students in order to support the world view that there is no Creator.

Why are cells and their machines able to function? Each cell contains in its library of information the directions for making the machines, and the instructions that tell how they are to work together. How did this information get there? Forget the phony theories! How do the directions for making machines get into any database? Does the evidence show that such directions result from a number of lucky accidents undirected by any source of intelligence? No! Never! Such information only conies from intelligent minds.

Even atheists admit that all other machines, from wheelbarrows to washing machines, had intelligent designers. Only in the case of the machines in cells does their commitment to materialism require them to make an exception. Their attitude carries over from the time when they thought cells were simple goo in a sack. Continuing research and better microscopes have revealed one layer of complexity after another. The marvellously coordinated machines of the cell are the worst exception they could make. If atheists claimed that a watch came about by accident we might wonder how they could believe something so contrary to the evidence. But making this claim for cell's machines is even worse than for a watch that automatically resets itself by signals from a satellite. The coordination of the molecular machines is much more complex.

If atheists want to get themselves into such an obvious conflict with reality, I probably should not complain, but why should they drag school books out onto such thin ice with them? Can't they see that the ice is going to break?

My prayer is that you may understand and act on your newly acquired knowledge to let God bring you into the most wonderful of all relationships. May you know God, and fit with him like a regulatory protein fits the stretch of DNA it was made for.

    Conclusion

Many who rejected God thought it was necessary if they were to follow science, but let's face it, many of the arguments used to convince you to believe in evolution were wrong. Haeckel's embryo drawings, for example, have been used in textbooks for more or less the entire 150 years it has been known they were faked. I quoted a number of statements from current school books that are not true. I also pointed out examples of downhill evolution used to create faith in uphill evolution. If uphill evidence had been available, evolutionists would have used it.

Some attack the Bible when I show them untrue or distorted statements which led them to become atheists. They claimed the Bible cannot be trusted either. Can it?

The most famous and most commonly used "proof" that the Bible is false says it was impossible for Adam and Eve's sons to have wives and children because the only woman who existed was their mother. While no daughters are named in Genesis chapters three and four, where three sons of Adam and Eve are specifically named, read a few verses farther, and the problem is solved. Genesis 5:4 says that Adam: "...begat sons and daughters." Adam's sons could marry their sisters.

Most cultures don't allow the marriage of close relatives now because their children would inherit the same mutations from both father and mother increasing the risk that the children would be born with genetic diseases. Since these diseases are caused by copying errors in duplicating the DNA during reproduction they accumulate gradually and were not present in the beginning. The Bible is not at fault. Most other points in which the Bible is under attack also have simple explanations.

There is much sound evidence that the Bible is inspired by God, and not simply a human book. For example, it contains many prophecies of specific events still off in the future at the time they were written. Hundreds of years before His birth it was stated that:

• Christ would be a descendant of David (Isaiah 9:6-7, Jeremiah 33:15-16).

• He would be born in the town of Bethlehem (Micah 5:2).

• He would die for our sins (Isaiah 53:4-6) with his hands and feet pierced, and that the soldiers would divide up his clothes and gamble for His coat (Psalm 22:16, 18).

Another is the creation of living things. The solid evidence attesting to His creation leads us to believe in Jesus Christ and in His Father. Belief in Christ is very important because it determines our future:

"He that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life: and he that believeth not the Son shall not see life; but the wrath of God abideth on him." (John 3:36).

While the Bible promises eternal life to people who trust in Christ, it also offers a way to verify this. It says their lives will be changed in the here and now:

"Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new." (2 Corinthians 5:17).

In fact, we see drunkards and drug addicts leaving their vices and treating their wives and families with love and respect after coming to Christ. The transformation is often very impressive. As a result, most big cities have rescue missions devoted to carrying the gospel to this kind of people. Many thieves have trusted in Christ, stopped stealing, and now work to support themselves and help others.

When I was in college, my roommate lived such an exemplary life, I was not able to brush it off when he explained to me from the Bible that I should trust Christ to save me. The evidence of his life impressed me, but I held my ground, and insisted that I could get to heaven by living a good life. To show him I could, I tried to do it. I made a serious attempt, but it was a dismal failure. I had one particular sin that was an embarrassment to me. I tried to stop, but could not cut it back.

I next convinced myself that my roommate's life was just a result of his unusual personality, not of God working in his life. Eventually I gave in to his invitations and went with him to a youth meeting at his church. There I found a whole youth group like my roommate, and many of them told how God had changed their lives when they trusted in Christ. I was soon convinced that God's work in their lives was real, and before long, I gave in, and trusted Jesus Christ to save me too. From that day my own life was radically changed for the better, just as the Bible said it would be. I watched with amazement as God took away the particular sin I had tried so hard to overcome.

    The Bible says,

"For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. For God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world; but that the world through him might be saved. He that believeth on him is not condemned: but he that believeth not is condemned already, because he hath not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God." (John 3:16-18).

The bad news in this quote is that people who have not trusted Christ are already condemned. Look over your life. You will see that you too have sinned. Have you trusted the Savior to save you? "He that believeth not is condemned already."

The quote's good news is that God loves you and if you will trust Jesus Christ to save you and give you everlasting life, He will. This is not just an abstract idea. When you trust Christ to save you, God will give you evidence that you are no longer condemned. He will change your life in the here and now. Trust Him to save you and see!
 

    Endnotes

1 Holt, Rinehart and Winston, Modern Biology, 2002, p. 264.

2 From the Kansas State Guidelines, see Peter Keeting, "God and Man in OZ," George, Oct, 2000, p. 87.

3 The laws of probability, entropy from the second law of thermodynamics, and cause and effect.

4 Iris Fry, The Emergence of Life on Earth, 2000, p. 127. See also: Holt, Biology, Visualizing Life, 1998, p. 192.

5 Holt, Biology, Visualizing Life, p. 194.

6 Fry, The Emergence of Life on Earth, pp. 126, 176-177; Quoting Cairns-Smith, Seven Clues to the Origin of Life, 1985, p. 126.

7 James P. Ferns, "From Building Blocks to the Polymers of Life," in Life's Origin, Editor: J W Schopf, 2002, p. 136.

8 Bruce Alberts, etc. Essential Cell Biology, An Introduction to the Molecular Biology of the Cell, 1998, p. 347.

9 Leslie E. Orgel, "The Origin of Biological Information," from the book Life's Origin, edited by J. William Schopf, 2002, p. 140.

10 Ibid.

11 See my book: How Life Began, pp. 15-16, 23-26 for documentation.

12 Orgel, Life's Origin, pp.73, 151.

13 Johnson, Raven, Biology, Principles & Explorations, 1998, p. 235.

14 Orgel, Life's Origin, p. 140.

15 Ibid., p. 154.

16 Andrew H. Knoll, Life on a Young Earth, 2003, p. 79.

17 Life's Origin, James P. Ferns, "From Building Blocks to the Polymers of Life," 2002, p. 123.

18 Stanley L. Miller, and Antonio Lazcano, "Formation of the Building Blocks of Life," in the book Life's Origin, editor J. W. Schopf, 2002, pp. 98-100.

19 For example: Holt, Biology, Visualizing Life, 1998, p. 192.

20 Johnson, Raven, Biology, Principles & Explorations, p. 230

21 Biology, The Unity and Diversity of Life, 1989, p. 572.

22 Peter D. Ward, Donald Brownlee, Rare Earth, Why Complex Life is Uncommon in the Universe, 2000, First quote: p. 63. (See also The RNA World, Second Edition, 1999, pp. 68, 159) Second quote: Rare Earth p. 65, see also pp. 62-66.

23 The RNA World, Second Edition, 1999, pp. 165-171.

24 Tom A. Rapoport of Harvard Medical School, Science News, 10/16/99, Vol. 156, Issue 16, p. 246. See also Britannica Biography Collection, Guenter Blobel.

25 http://www.research.ibm.com/bluegene/press_release.html

26 Susan Aldridge, The Thread of Life, The Story of Genes and Genetic Engineering, Cambridge University Press, 1996, pp. 47-53.

27 P. F. Lurquin, The Origins of Life and the Universe, 2003, p. 133.

28 Ward, etc., Rare Earth, p. 57. See also Life's Origin, p. 173.

29 Christian de Duve, "The Beginning of Life on Earth," American Scientist, Vol. 83, Sept.-Oct. 1995, p. 428.

30 Charles B. Thaxton, "In Pursuit of Intelligent Causes" Origins & Design, Summer 2001, pp. 28-29.

31 For documentation and further discussion, see my book, How Life Began, Chick Publications, pp. 102-103, 131-133.

32 P. F. Lurquin, The Origins of Life and the Universe, 2003, p. 6.

33 Lee M. Spetner, Not by Chance, 1998, p. 30.

34 Random House, Webster's College Dictionary, 2000, p. 678.

35 Alberts, etc., Essential Cell Biology, pp. 259-262.

36 Michael J. Behe, Darwin's Black Box, 1996, p. 24.
 

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