GENETICS CLASS DISCUSSION

A university student decides to ask some questions. Let us sit in on the conversation. It is an interesting one. This is science vs. evolution—a Creation-Evolution Encyclopedia, brought to you by Creation Science Facts.

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.

Instructor: Today we are going to discuss more on the origins of life. I am happy to be able to report to you that the experts are convinced that everything made itself.

Student: But prof, what about deoxyribonucleic acid? How could it—DNA—make itself?

Instructor: It probably happened one day when warm water in a pond got stirred up by a passing breeze.

Student: DNA is a double stranded helix found inside chromosomes and contains four nucleotide units: adenine, guanine, cytosine, and thymine. How could that make itself?

Instructor: Given enough time, all kinds of things can happen.

Student: Averaging 60 thousand billion specks, the DNA in your body contains all your genetic traits. Each particle contains billions of complicated structures and codes.

Instructor: Aha, yes, I have read something about that.

Student: The spiraling sides of each DNA ladder is made of complicated sugar and phosphate compounds, and the crosspieces are nitrogen compounds. The structure is astounding, and then there are the codes—

Instructor: H'mmm, yes.

Student: Everyone's codes are different from everyone else's. Yet there are billions of people in the world. But that is because all the DNA codes in just one molecule would, if put into English, fill an exhaustive set of encyclopedias of human knowledge.

Instructor: And then the DNA splits apart, admittedly a crude process.

Student: Far from crude! The DNA ladder literally unhooks and then rehooks. Old cells are constantly dying, so new ones must continually be made. Yet old cells die by the billions every minute. So fast, accurate work has to be done. When the cells divide, the DNA ladder splits down the middle.

Instructor: That just goes to show how well that breeze blew on that pond, back then. Mother Nature is very resourceful.

Student: It would be impossible for pond water to produce this. Almost instantly, the ladders unhook, and a new half for each is made—and now there are two laddered DNA molecules, where there was one.

Instructor: That's going a little too fast.

Student: A thousand new base pairs are made each second. The human body has 100 trillion cells, and every minute 3 billion of them die in your body.

Instructor: Haste makes waste. Such speed probably produces mistakes, especially since it all started with pond water.

Student: Careful accuracy is maintained by controller enzymes throughout the process. For example, the editese enzyme checks as the splitting apart and reformation is carried out—to make sure it is done right, and the new DNA molecule is exactly like the old one.

Instructor: It would be impossible for a little enzymatic fluid to be so intelligent, and so fast.

Student: But researchers have found that is what happens. As soon as the new DNA is made, it begins working in a new cell prepared for it. For not only the DNA, but the cell it would be housed in, had to quickly be made.

Instructor: I understand that the DNA then sends out messages—

Student: The body is composed of cells, and the cells are told by the DNA everything they are to do. But, when it sends out those messages, a translator package is needed to explain it to the cells.

Instructor: It is hard to see how all that could have come from pond water.

Student: It didn't. The translation package has to be made, just like the DNA and the rest of the cell. And it has to work perfectly, right from the start! Then there are the message codes—

Instructor: Yes, codes, I have read something about them.

Student: Each cell contains a hundred thousand million atoms, yet each atom will be arranged in a specific order. How could that come out of pond water?

Instructor: I'm losing faith in pond water.

Student: We haven't even mentioned RNA. There is a specific s-RNA molecule for every individual amino acid. There are lots of other RNA molecules, each one doing something different.

Instructor: Sigh!

Student: Then there is the t-RNA. It is in between the DNA and each amino acid—so there are 20 kinds of t-RNA. Chemically, each one is different than the others. Yet they all have to be there. t-RNA changes the DNA code to a different code, which the amino acid understands. And then there is the—

Instructor: Saved by the bell! Well, students, we must have faith in pond water.

FOR MORE INFORMATION:

To the first major topic in the next series:
NATURAL SELECTION. The falsity of so-called "natural selection" as a means of producing new species is clearly shown. There have been no trans-species changes.