About Evolution... and a Poem at the end

Evolution! I was taught evolution as a kid, and sat there in the classroom while the teacher emotionally bullied everybody into submission... "Every thinking person must agree...", "Every intelligent person can see that evolution has been proved... "; and so on. And I agonised over it because I just couldn't see it.

Well! I am pleased to say that any thinking person will agree with me on this one... :) just keep up now!...

Ever heard the old conundrum - what came first, the chicken or the egg? Well in evolutionary terms there is no conundrum... we could put it like this - What came first, the blueprint or the cell. Everybody knows you need a blueprint before you construct the building (cell)!

Let me flesh this out a little... and this is what simply does evolutionists’ collective heads in!!! - Say, just say, that trillions of atoms formed themselves into billions of molecules and these actually happen to form themselves into the essential amino acids... and these just happen to form themselves into complex chains made of of many different amino acids, and then, these fold themselves in the right way (that is, without the use of a folding machine that already exists inside a cell) to make up a protein that will take up its own particular role in the construction of a cell ... AND, (hang in there, we're not finished yet) it gets transported (without the aid of the little "trucks" that do the transporting inside an already formed cell) to the right place amongst all of the other billions of proteins that have similarly, amazingly, come into being through this chance process, and being in exactly the right place, at exactly the right time, they all just wonderfully happen to take (meld, stick together) by some wonderful laws of attraction... ALL you have is still only a dead cell. (Darwin knew nothing of this stuff, by the way, to him a cell was just a middle bit and the surrounding bit and the bit that held it all together... Nah! He didn't even know that much, to him it was just a blob).

...Oh! By the way, back in 1996 scientists around the world, “armed with their best computer programs, competed to solve one of the most complex problems in biology: how a single protein, made from a long string of amino acids, folds itself into the intricate shape that determines the role it plays in life. . . . The result, succinctly put, was this: the computers lost and the proteins won. . . . Scientists have estimated that for an average-sized protein, made from 100 amino acids, solving the folding problem by trying every possibility would take 10 to the power of 27 (a billion, billion, billion) years.”—The New York Times. And that is only solving the problem of folding for 1 protein... how many different proteins are in a cell?

So just dwell on this for a moment - the quotation from The New York Times above is talking about "solving the folding problem by trying every possibility"... with a computer. So the probability against it actually happening in real life, would be much higher right? Well yes! Evolutionists have acknowledged that the actual probability of even a simple protein molecule forming randomly in an organic soup would be 1 in 10 followed by 113 zeros (or 10 to the power of 113). But any event that has one chance in just 10 to the power of 50 is dismissed by mathematicians as never happening.

Oh, yes, where were we? That's right! You still have only a dead cell. Let me put it this way, if I were to pluck a live cell out of my body (nowhere too painful) and put it on a slide under a microscope... I couldn't actually tell when that cell died... the exact, precise time, that is, when it ceased to be living. But I do know this! There is not a scientist or medical person on earth that can cause that cell to live once it has died. Nobody, but nobody, can breathe life back into it. And hey! This is the easy route! Having a cell fully formed, an, everything in place cell to work with... not the messing around described above... all of the components are already in place... just dead... hmmmm, that is a problem!

Well remember the conundrum from above? What came first...? Well in a cell we have a blueprint. A very, very, complex blueprint, the like of which you would never see in the entire world in actual print. In fact, imagine the detailed specifications for the biggest building built by man. Still doesn't hold a torch to the DNA blueprint in the nucleus of a cell.

Watson and Crick won the Nobel prize in 1962 for discovering the structure of DNA, and the human genome project took roughly 10 years (from 1990-2000) to actually map the 25,000 genes that are the human genome. Scientists have discovered what they believe to be a code superimposed upon the actual base coding of the DNA. I mean, this is mind blowing stuff, and here is roughly how it works in practice -

There is a need within the cell, or, for what the cell is specialised to produce (a hormone, a replacement part, or whatever), and so the double helix is un-zippered in just exactly the right place and a molecular machine copies the exposed instructions to form a strand of messenger RNA. Having duplicated the instructions the RNA is transported through a portal in the nucleus wall, to the factory floor beyond where a ribosome translates the instructions "inscribed" on the RNA. Amino acids are transported from other parts of the cell and assembled into the exact chain that is required for the protein that is to be constructed. The chain of amino acids is then transported to a barrel shaped machine, which is a folding station. This then folds it into the form for its specific role in the cell or body and then a little "truck" comes along and transports it to where it is needed. Isn't that just wonderful! Mind-boggling! But hold up! This process cannot continue without the blueprint and the blueprint is pure information with detailed instructions, sequences, everything. Now I don't know what you have been taught, but information like that does not come apart from intelligence. The book (blueprint) is necessary before the cell can produce anything useful, and is necessary for replication... now where would you get such a blueprint... the corner library? Only if you had a pick-up truck; because the information stored in the DNA in a single cell is equivalent to a 920 volume encyclopoedia! I think that is a conservative estimate.

Still, there is an interesting aspect here, however, and that is - despite scientific advances in peering in to the mechanics of life at the cellular level, people still believe evolution. It has been said many times by scientists today, that if Darwin had actually had the information about the cell that we have today, evolution could never, ever, have got off the ground as a theory. Er... It still is a theory isn’t it?

Now how about a poem? This was written for a friend who is a philosopher and likes to discuss these things.

To Mark - On Questions of Belief

Searching, wondering, listening

To feelings deep inside

Exploring possibilities

Bad theories thrown aside

Is there a God? Did we evolve?

Is worship just a crutch?

We ponder this quite endlessly

Being cynical overmuch

Those that claim a worship true

In actions oft’ betrayed

As nothing more than hypocrites

Their piety falsely played

In times of war it’s all so clear

They say “God is on my side”

But just the same their enemy

‘Neath God’s loving hand does hide

So some say, “I’ll be an atheist -

It makes just much more sense”

Then look closely at a flower

Or the universe immense

And start to wonder yet again

Was it all just happenstance?

Will we find the answer in a fix?

Or seek it in a trance?

But then, perhaps, a lucid patch

And think, “If there is a God…

We can surely find his fingerprints

Or where his footsteps trod”

I once read an ancient verse

The writer made no fuss

Just simply said to grope for God

He’s not far from each of us.

His fingerprints are everywhere

His footsteps clearly seen

Good grief! Just look at DNA

A blueprint in the genes

So what came first? I’m asking you

The blueprint or the cell

The truth can be quite clearly shown

I beg you; let me tell
1/7/09