All Creatures Great and Small
All Creatures Great and Small
By Jack Kinsella
A Zogby poll found the vast majority of Americans want schools to teach the weaknesses, as well as the perceived strengths of Darwinian thought.
According to the report, which was commissioned by the Discovery Institute Center for Science and Culture, respondents were given the two following statements:
Statement A: “Biology teachers should teach only Darwin’s theory of evolution and the scientific evidence that supports it.”
Statement B: “Biology teachers should teach Darwin’s theory of evolution, but also the scientific evidence against it.”
Of those surveyed 78% chose statement B. The same poll also asked respondents whether they believed in natural selection or intelligent design. A majority chose intelligent design, although a third of respondents said they believed in evolution as an unguided process.
Dr. John West, associate director of the Center for Science and Culture, said the findings contradict the prevailing notion that “a small group of the uneducated” – as critics charge — drove skepticism over Darwin’s theory.
“Media reports insinuate that a right-wing conspiracy of know-nothings and religious-extremists is afoot,” he said. “But the new Zogby poll represents a broad-based and well-informed public consensus for academic freedom on evolution. The Darwin lobby has isolated itself from public opinion.”
It never ceases to amaze me the way that the numbers don’t lie, but the number crunchers do.
The Zogby poll was challenged by atheist groups like the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry, and the National Center for Science Education on the grounds the questions were skewed.
Since the CIA World Factbook’s section on religion in America lists the US population at 51.3% Protestant and 23.9% Catholic, (75.2% ) a finding that 78% favor intelligent design is entirely consistent with the general population.
(What is inconsistent is the assumption that the 4% of Americans the CIA says have “no religion” are the ones getting all the press.)
Assessment
What is killing Darwinism in America isn’t religion, but genuine science. Every living thing on the face of the earth has DNA and the DNA in all living creatures has the same chemical composition.
Francis Crick was a physicist who had been a code-breaker during WWII. After the war he teamed up with a biologist named James Watson and together they cracked the DNA code.
In 1957 they discovered that the four base chemicals of DNA function exactly like alphabetic characters in written text. The sequential arrangement of these four base chemicals determine whether you are a blonde with blue eyes or the artichoke on his dinner plate.
Think of DNA like a PC loaded with an operating system. Install MS Word and it is a word processor. Install games and its a game console.
Install different software and it can run a water treatment plant. Or it can run a hospital. Land an airplane. Mimic a television. It’s all in the instructions.
The four ‘characters’ in DNA aren’t metaphorical, they actually function like characters in a message system.
How complicated a message can be carried by only four characters? The message you are reading right now is nothing more than a carefully arranged series of sequences of 0’s and 1’s or, ‘bits’.
A computer ‘bit’ is the simplest form of computer code because it can exhibit only one of two states. You can think of a bit as being either Yes or No, On or Off, True or False, 1 or 0.
All DNA, whether it is that of a single-celled creature or an evolutionary scientist, consists of that basic PC plus programming. But with FOUR basic characters to work with instead of the two that make up a computer ‘bit’.
The DNA/PC is then programmed using these four basic characters. Every cell in every living being contains one of these elegant little PC’s programmed with the information, networked with all the other cells which arranged themselves to form distinctive organs, tissue, etc., according to the blueprint encoded into the DNA.
This incredibly sophisticated information is embedded in the DNA of the simplest living creature on earth. We’ve been studying this code for almost fifty years and have yet to unlock but a fraction of its secrets. A former Microsoft architect-level programmer working on a computer simulation of how genetic information is expressed was shocked by the design logic built in to DNA. It is the same as basic computer logic, he said, but far more elegant than anything we could conceive.
That same logic was built into every cell of every living thing that ever lived. Think of it! The computer code we’re now learning to read was published at the foundation of the world. Darwin saw natural selection and evolution as the explanation for variations between species.
Darwin proposed a mechanism of natural selection acting on random variables, best summarized as survival of the fittest. But he put his emphasis on natural and random as an alternative explanation for intelligent design.
Of course he did. He couldn’t have imagined in 1845 that tiny PC’s preprogrammed with carefully arranged machine code containing blueprint instructions for every molecule of every living species was responsible. But they were there whether he could imagine them or not.
Darwin’s theory always had a fundamental flaw that Darwinists continue to avoid to this day. How life was created from non-life in the first place. The primordial ooze theory is neo-Darwinian, but it still fails to offer a logical explanation for the emergence of life from non-life.
But that doesn’t explain the incredibly complex DNA coding necessary for that first life to appear — including encoding for the size and shape for the offspring of that first life. Before we can ask ourselves how the PC got programmed, we first have to ask ourselves who built it in the first place?
Let that buzz around in your head for a minute. We’ve heard evolution compared to a tornado ripping through a junkyard and randomly assembling a brand new Cadillac, or the absurdity of finding a Rolex on a beach and assuming it evolved there over millions of years.
DNA is a computer more elegant than the one you are reading today’s OL from. It is similar, but endlessly more powerful. Every living cell that ever existed contains one. Every DNA computer contains the complete blueprint for the type of creature it is. It also contains the blueprint necessary to reproduce after its own kind.
As brilliant as our most brilliant supercomputer might be, it operates according to the amount of information that can be conveyed by two-digit ‘bits’ while the DNA in an acorn contains four.
Bill Gates says DNA is like a software program, but much more complex than everything we’ve ever written. Even Richard Dawkins acknowledges that it’s a machine code. Astonishingly, both men are seemingly comfortable with the idea that it evolved naturally, somehow.
It seems to be a case of having decided in advance that there is no God, and therefore any evidence that suggests the possibility of design must be refuted. It sounds foolish. Because it is.
The Intelligence behind the design put it this way: “Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools.” It takes a determined and studied ignorance to deny the intelligence design incorporated into every strand of DNA. And if there is an Intelligence capable of such design, then there must be a Creator. If there is a Creator, then the only logical way to express the existence of such a Being would be as God.
Assuming God is intelligent enough to program my DNA so that my son Rick looks like a junior version of me, it is logical to assume He is capable of communicating with me using a language I can understand. But since I am a sentient being, I can imagine whatever He is saying whatever I want, so it is also logical that He would provide a moral code that is compatible to man’s genetic code.
In fact, it would seem illogical to provide one without the other. My DNA was encoded by God with all the information necessary for my physical body to live on this earth. The Bible was encoded by God to enable my spirit to live on this earth inside this physical body.
“For to be carnally minded is death; but to be spiritually minded is life and peace.” (Romans 8:6)
“But the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned.” (1st Corinthians 2:14)
God precisely how complex our DNA was two thousand years ago when He inspired the Apostle Paul to write:
“For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who hold the truth in unrighteousness; Because that which may be known of God is manifest in them; for God hath shewed it unto them.”
It is as if Paul is speaking directly of the double helix and directly to Darwin and his followers.
“For the invisible things of Him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even His eternal power and Godhead; so that they are without excuse: Because that, when they knew God, they glorified him not as God, neither were thankful; but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened.” (Romans 1:19-21)
No scientist who has any level of competence in understanding of the complexity of DNA can argue that he doesn’t know. No skeptic or atheist can honestly claim that he has “reason” on his side of the argument. Unless there is a reasonable explanation for DNA that doesn’t include a Someone to invent the computer first, and then program it afterwards.
Apart from a Creator God, there isn’t one.
“For Thou hast possessed my reins: thou hast covered me in my mother’s womb. I will praise Thee; for I am fearfully and wonderfully made: marvellous are Thy works; and that my soul knoweth right well.” (Psalms 139:14)
This Letter was written by Jack Kinsella on July 13, 2009.