SCIENTISTS SPEAK ABOUT DNA
Scientists wish to tell you that the DNA molecule stands as a wall, blocking the possibility that one species could change into another. And where there is no trans-species change, there is no evolution. In addition, DNA could not originate by chance. This is science vs. evolution—a Creation-Evolution Encyclopedia, brought to you by Creation Science Facts.
CONTENTS: Scientists Speak about DNA
Impossible for DNA to Self-produce: It could not come about by chance
Devastating Math Probabilities: Forget the possibility
DNA Barrier Forbids Change: One species could never change into another
Vast Information within It: Too much data within each molecule to permit switchovers
Conclusion: Not chance, but Someone made DNA
This material is excerpted from the book, DNA AND CELLS. An asterisk ( * ) by a name indicates that person is not known to be a creationist. Of over 4,000 quotations in the books this Encyclopedia is based on, only 164 statements are by creationists. You will have a better understanding of the following statements by scientists if you will also read the web page, DNA and Cells.
IMPOSSIBLE FOR DNA TO SELF-PRODUCE
It could not make itself or come into existence by chance.
"Where are we when presented with the mystery of life? We find ourselves facing a granite wall which we have not even chipped . . We know virtually nothing of growth, nothing of life."—*W. Kaempffert, "The Greatest Mystery of All: The Secret of Life," New York Times.
"The over-riding supremacy of the myth has created a widespread illusion that the theory of evolution was all but proved one hundred years ago and that all subsequent biological research—paleontological, zoological and in the newer branches of genetics and molecular biology—has provided ever-increasing evidence of Darwinian ideas."—*Michael Denton, Evolution: A Theory in Crisis (1985), p. 327.
"The irony is devastating. The main purpose of Darwinism was to drive every last trace of an incredible God from biology. But the theory replaces God with an even more incredible deity—omnipotent chance."—*T. Rosazak, Unfinished Animal (1975), pp. 101-102.
"To involve purpose is in the eyes of biologists the ultimate scientific sin . . The revulsion which biologists feel about the thought that purpose might have a place in the structure of biology is therefore revulsion to the concept that biology might have a connection to an intelligence higher than our own."—Sir Fred Hoyle and *Chandra Wickramasinghe, Evolution from Space (1981), p. 32.
DEVASTATING MATH PROBABILITIES
The possibilities of it occurring by chance are devastating.
"Based on probability factors . . any viable DNA strand having over 84 nucleotides cannot be the result of haphazard mutations. At that stage, the probabilities are 1 in 4.80 x 1050. Such a number, if written out, would read:
480,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,
000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000.
"Mathematicians agree that any requisite number beyond 1050 has, statistically, a zero probability of occurrence (and even that gives it the benefit of the doubt!). Any species known to us, including the smallest single-cell bacteria, have enormously larger number of nucleotides than 100 or 1000. In fact, single cell bacteria display about 3,000,000 nucleotides, aligned in a very specific sequence. This means that there is no mathematical probability whatever for any known species to have been the product of a random occurrence—random mutations (to use the evolutionist's favorite expression)."—I.L. Cohen, Darwin was Wrong (1984), p. 205.
"This means 1 / 1089190 DNA molecules, on the average, must form to provide the one chance of forming the specific DNA sequence necessary to code the 124 proteins. 1089190 DNA's would weigh 1089147 times more than the earth, and would certainly be sufficient to fill the universe many times over. It is estimated that the total amount of DNA necessary to code 100 billion people could be contained in ½ of an aspirin tablet. Surely 1089147 times the weight of the earth in DNA's is a stupendous amount and emphasizes how remote the chance is to form the one DNA molecule. A quantity of DNA this colossal could never have formed."—R.L. Wysong, The Creation-Evolution Controversy, p. 115.
"Nowadays computers are operating within a range which is not entirely incommensurate with that dealt with in actual evolution theories. If a species breeds once a year, the number of cycles in a million years is about the same as that which one would obtain in a ten-day computation which iterates a program whose duration is a hundredth of a second . . Now we have less excuse for explaining away difficulties [via evolutionary theory] by invoking the unobservable effect of astronomical [enormously large] numbers of small variations."—*M.P. Schutzenberger, Mathematical Challenges in the Neo-Darwinian Interpretation of Evolution (1967), pp. 73-75 [an address given at the Wistar Institute of Anatomy and Biology Symposium].
"We believe that there is a considerable gap in the neo-Darwinian theory of evolution, and we believe this gap to be of such a nature that it cannot be bridged within the current conception of biology."—M.P. Schutzenberger, Mathematical Challenges in the Neo-Darwinian Interpretation of Evolution (1967), pp. 73-75 [an address given at the Wistar Institute of Anatomy and Biology Symposium].
"Time is no help. Bio-molecules outside a living system tend to degrade with time, not build up. In most cases, a few days is all they would last. Time decomposes complex systems. If a large `word' (a protein) or even a paragraph is generated by chance, time will operate to degrade it. The more time you allow, the less chance there is that fragmentary `sense' will survive the chemical maelstrom of matter."—Michael Pitman, Adam and Evolution (1984), p. 233.
"So the simultaneous formation of two or more molecules of any given enzyme purely by chance is fantastically improbable."—*W. Thorpe, "Reductionism in Biology," in Studies in the Philosophy of Biology (1974), p. 117.
DNA BARRIER FORBIDS CHANGE
The DNA barrier forbids trans-species changes—one species changing into another.
"*Alfred Wallace, the co-developer (with *Charles Darwin) of the evolutionary theory, survived Darwin by several decades and was alive when Mendelian genetics was rediscovered and began to be investigated. Wallace, clearly recognized that Mendelian principles were a total variance with evolutionary theory.
"But, on the general relation of Mendelism to Evolution, I have come to a very definite conclusion. This is, that it has no relation whatever to the evolution of species or higher groups, but is really antagonistic to such evolution! The essential basis of evolution, involving as it does the most minute and all-pervading adaptation to the whole environment, as extreme and ever-present plasticity, as a condition of survival and adaptation. But the essence of Mendelian characters is their rigidity. They are transmitted without variation, and therefore, except by the rarest of accidents, can never become adapted to every varying condition."—*Alfred Russel Wallace, Letters and Reminiscences by James Marchant (1916), p. 340.
"The usual answer to this question is that there was plenty of time to try everything. I could never accept this answer. Random shuttling of bricks will never build a castle or a Greek temple, however long the available time. A random process can build meaningful structures only if there is some kind of selection between meaningful and nonsense mutations."—*A. Szent-Gyorgyi, "The Evolutionary Paradox and Biological Stability," in Molecular Evolution, p. 111.
VAST AMOUNT OF INFORMATION WITHIN IT
The amount of information within each DNA system is vast. There is too much data within each molecule to permit switchovers.
"[The instructions within the DNA of the cell] if written out, would fill a thousand 600-page books. Each cell is a world brimming with as many as two hundred trillion tiny groups of atoms called molecules . . Our 46 chromosome `threads' [in one DNA molecule] linked together would measure more than six feet. Yet the nucleus that contains them is less than four ten-thousandths of an inch in diameter."—*Rick Gore, "The Awesome Worlds Within a Cell," National Geographic, September 1976, pp. 357-358, 360.
"There is enough storage capacity in the DNA of a single lily seed or a single salamander sperm to store in the Encyclopedia Britannicas."—*R. Dawkins, The Blind Watchmaker, pp. 115-116.
CONCLUSION
Not chance, but Someone made DNA.
"The presence of a living unit is exactly opposite to what we would expect on the basis of pure statistical and probability considerations."—*Peter Mora, "Urge and Molecular Biology," in Nature (1963), p. 215.
"It is very hard to avoid using words that suggest purpose when describing the wonderfully adapted structures that occur in the living world."—*L.E. Orgel, The Origins of Life: Molecules and Natural Selection (1973), p. 182.
"That life is, . . is a miracle from the point of view of the physical scientist."—*E.P. Wigner, "The Probability of a Self-Reproducing Unit," in the Logic of Personal Knowledge (1961), p. 231.
"To put it at its mildest, one may question an evolutionary theory so beset by doubts among even those who teach it. If Darwinism is truly the great unifying principle of biology, it encompasses extraordinarily large areas of ignorance. It fails to explain some of the most basic questions of all: how lifeless chemicals came alive, what rules of grammar lie behind the genetic code, how genes shape the form of living things."—*Francis Hitching, The Neck of the Giraffe (9182), pp. 108, 117.
"The answer would seem to me, combined with the knowledge that life is actually there, to lead to the conclusion that some sequences other than chance occurrences must have led to the appearance of life as we know it."—*J.D. Bernal, The Origins of Prebiological Systems and Their Molecular Matrices (1965), p. 53.
"There is a growing likelihood that the genome may contain even more than one hundred thousand million bits of information."—*Michael Denton, Evolution: A Theory in Crisis (1985), p. 351.
"Rather than accept that fantastically small probability of life having arisen through the blind forces of nature, it seemed better to suppose that the origin of life was a deliberate intellectual act. By `better' I mean less likely to be wrong."—*Fred Hoyle "The Universe: Past and Present Reflections, in Engineering and Science, November 1981, pp. 8, 12.
FOR MORE INFORMATION:
To the next topic in this series: SCIENTISTS SPEAK ABOUT THE CELL and show that it is too incredibly complicated to have come into existence by chance.