DNA: The Code That Points to a Creator - FAS2614

SPEAKER A Your DNA contains 3 million base pairs, enough information to fill 1,000 encyclopedia volumes. But here's what makes it truly remarkable. DNA isn't just data storage. It's a self-replicating, self-correcting information processing system that builds and maintains your entire body. It's like computer code, and computer code requires programmers. So where did DNA's programmer come from? Welcome to Faith and Science. I'm Kaysie Vokurka. Joining me to discuss this topic is Dr. John Ashton. Welcome to the program, Dr. John. SPEAKER B Hello, Kaysie. SPEAKER A Dr. John has written a book called The Big Argument: Does God Exist? And in today's program, we'll be drawing on some insights from this book, from chapter 5, which talks about all things in the human body. Your— the book, the chapter in chapter 5 describes DNA as the life code or genetic blueprint for our human body. How complex is this code and would it be more sophisticated than computer software? SPEAKER B Oh, it's way more sophisticated. When you think about it, the best biochemists now, we can't write new pieces of code to make things happen. So we can't write a new genetic code. So that I implanted into some pig DNA so that the pig developed wings and could fly. We could have a go at developing some, maybe, you know, and get close to some wings, but then would it fly? Would it have the aerodynamic properties? We just can't write new code to do things like that. SPEAKER A So with all the knowledge we have today about DNA, we still don't know enough about it to get it to do so. SPEAKER B Yeah, we can't make new code to write, you know, new things. Wow. SPEAKER A Okay. SPEAKER B Yeah, to, you know, put a trunk on a cow or a mouse or something like that, you know. SPEAKER A Make our own species. SPEAKER B Yeah, that's right. And it's interesting, we often think of it in terms of a computer code. I remember learning computer programming part of Applied Maths 2 back in 1966. And back then, computer programming was only just being taught at universities in Australia, in Newcastle, which was a strong Australia's largest industrial city. From memory, there was one computer that was at the BHP Central Research Laboratories. That's where we— at the university, we used to— sorry, not at the BHP Research Laboratories, at the BHP main centre. We programmed in Fortran 4, although we bought in a PDP-11, I think, and started programming in BASIC. And I remember, so back then we had punch cards. And you, you wrote your program, it got punched, you sent it in to the computer operators in at the big computer in head office. And the thing was that if you made a little mistake, left out a dot, didn't have your slash in the right place, this sort of thing, the program would often collapse. And there was a guy in there of a nighttime. So all the research programs went in of a night. Because they had the other programs involved with running the operations ran during the day. The research programs were run overnight. And there was a guy in there called the Phantom. He signed himself the Phantom Operator, and he would often have a look through your program and see if he could pick where you'd left out your full stop and, and try and fix your program for you so that it could of work. I know a few times I, the guys must go to sleep, I remember I accidentally printed out 'cause' that just began, the computer just began printing everything. And so, yeah, you make a few mistakes. So what evolutionists have to believe is that random changes to the assembly of amino acids, right, can produce this amazing system. And we've got major chemical problems here because For a start, the reactions involved in producing the code, right, to produce the DNA molecule, only occur in an existing living system. Those reactions don't go in just real life in nature. So evolutionists have a major problem on how first life starts. Now, some of the things they claim is that, well, hang on, evolution isn't about that. Evolution is, about how you have life already here and how it then changes. And so they try to push it out and say, well, life came here from outer space or, you know, somehow it got here. But you have the same problem. If chemistry is, chemical reactions are the same throughout the universe, which we assume it is, we don't know, but we assume, right? We assume that the law of gravity and so forth, these laws of physics are fairly uniform across the universe. Then we know that the reactions required to synthesize and produce those amino acids and assemble them is not going to occur in a natural environment. It can only occur in a living system environment with enzymes to assist. And this is pretty— this is pretty important. And secondly, to make anything from that code, you need a code reader. All right. So if I had given my punch cards to, you know, a 5-year-old, they wouldn't mean anything to them. So this is, again, you needed a— and it had to be if you were writing in Fortran 4 for that computer, that computer had to be programmed to read Fortran 4. This sort of thing. Like the PDT P-11 read BASIC. Fortran 4 wouldn't work in a PDP-11 computer. And so, you know, this is another very important thing. We had to have this specific code reader. And the fascinating thing is, of course, that the code to make the code reader was in the code. And that ribosome, you know, which is an amazing form of code, over, you know, 300,000 atoms in that molecule have to be assembled. But again, the chemical reactions required to synthesize and make that reaction happen, well, only those reactions will only occur in the presence of an existing living system with all the available enzymes and so forth there to construct them. And this is a very interesting concept that not many people understand. If listeners want to Google, Dr. James Tour and probably a talk, Chemists Don't Have a Clue, something like this, where he's a synthetic chemist, one of the most highly cited synthetic chemists in the world. Huge H rating. That means huge number of citations of his work as quoted by other, other people. And so highly respected chemist. And he points this out. That, you know, you can't have these reactions, these reactions don't go. And so even then, once you have a living system somehow set up to produce mutations in the code, for the chances for those mutations to line up to produce some meaningful code that can be read is so improbable that even if there were as many universes as there are, particles in the universe, there still wouldn't be enough probability to produce some basic life forms. And this is what I think it's so hard for many people, and particularly academics, to understand. And what people don't realize is the reason why evolution is being taught in our schools today, the reason why court judges support it, and, you know, politicians vote to keep it in rather than creationists, that's what they've been taught. SPEAKER A Yes. SPEAKER B But they've been taught something that hasn't been based on scientific facts and proven evidence. There's no known mechanism for evolution to occur. There's no known mechanism where reading a meaningful genetic code can arise to produce a new functioning body part. There's no known mechanism. I remember having a look at University of California Berkeley website some years ago, and the evolution— teaching evolution section. And at least honestly, they point out this is one of the areas that biologists are still trying to figure out, how evolution happens. It's taught to people, but there's really no known mechanism on how it can happen. But when we look at the known biochemistry that we know at the moment, Evolution is absolutely impossible. Now, people, you know, and I've discussed this before, okay, don't we observe evolution? Sure, we observe, you know, I think I mentioned it before, the top 10 food poisoning bacteria have probably evolved since 1970 that we have to worry about in food processing today. But these have all evolved as a result of the loss of genetic information, mutations damaging and stopping parts of the code working. This sort of thing, or we have a piece of preexisting genetic code is transferred from one organism to the other. But again, that requires preexisting workable genetic code. SPEAKER A Yeah. SPEAKER B You know, and this is, you know, very, very important. You know, if we had some mammal the size of a pig that had wings, you know, and flew, similar physiology. I forget, there is a giant rodent. I forget the name of them now that live in South America. And so there was one of those that had wings. We may have been able to take that piece of genetic code and insert it into, you know, a pig code and it may have had a chance of flying. But there isn't, isn't one similar. So that, that's the sort of thing we can fly around, but that play around with, but we can't write new code to— for the, you know, pig, you know, and implant it in a fertilized pig egg embryo and have it develop a, you know, a wing system that works. And we can't even do it for simpler things like fruit flies, which have much simpler genetic codes where we can, you know, play around with the codes and these sort of things. And this is very important for people to understand that when we look at the scientific evidence, of what we can know about biological systems, evolution is absolutely impossible. SPEAKER A So that's interesting. What I'm wondering is, can any information at all come from chance processes? I'm kind of getting the impression that it's very unlikely. SPEAKER B Extremely unlikely. Even the probability of, you know, some simple functioning amino acid with a number of the amino acid groups assembled to make a simple protein, basic protein, when we do the probability calculations, they're enormous. SPEAKER A Really, just for a simple thing? SPEAKER B Yes, yes. SPEAKER A Wow. SPEAKER B And actually, there's a very good chapter on that in my book, In Six Days: Why 50 Scientists Choose to believe in creation rather than evolution. There's a chapter in there by a biochemist trained at the University of Michigan, John Marcus, and he actually goes through the molecular probability calculations for these very simple proteins to be assembled. And the probability is extremely large. And one of the reasons that people need to understand this is that not only do you have to assemble the amino acids, but there's such a thing as chirality, or right and left-handedness, and that all has to match up. Secondly, a number of the molecules that are involved have a number of particular conformations that they can have, right? SPEAKER A Yes. SPEAKER B And again, for these amino acids to have the correct biological activity, those conformations all have to be right and align up. And because there's so many combinations and possibilities of these, the probability of all these things lining up very quickly becomes astronomical. And that is another reason why it's virtually impossible to write new genetic code and assemble these things with the right conformities and so forth. And many biologists don't understand this chemistry. And this really frustrates me that these errors, this false picture of chemistry and biology continues to be taught to young people in the face of the overwhelming evidence that there must have been a creator, almighty power that we call God, the God of the Bible. That's the only solution that fits the evidence that we have today. SPEAKER A Yeah, it makes me think if you happen to find computer code written all over the beach and then you said, "Oh, the waves made it," people would think that's stupid.— we're talking about a scenario that's even far greater than that from what you're describing. The incredible complexity involved in even just one little process or one little amino acid combination protein production type thing. Absolutely incredible. I guess, as we've learned more about chemistry in the last number of decades and biochemistry, you know, all of this understanding has emerged that, hey, what we're dealing with here in life is absolutely incredible. And, um, yeah, you mentioned about we need an intelligent creator model to explain it, which, um, thank you for showing that so clearly. Have you ever struggled with doubts about God's existence or known someone who has? What helped you through it? Share your thoughts and stories in the comments. Your journey could inspire someone else who's searching for answers.