Chapter 8c:
DNA & Protein
Why DNA and Protein could not be Produced by Random Chance
DIXON-WEBB CALCULATION—In 1964 *Malcolm Dixon and *Edwin Webb, on page 667 of their standard reference work, Enzymes, mentioned to fellow scientists that in order to get the needed amino acids in close enough proximity to form a single protein molecule, a total volume of amino-acid solution equal to 1050 times the volume of our earth would be needed! That would be 1 with 50 zeros after it multiplied by the contents of a mixing bowl. And the bowl would be so large that planet earth would be in it!
After using the above method to obtain ONE protein molecule, what would it take to produce ONE hemoglobin (blood) molecule which contains 574 specifically coded amino acids? On page 279 of their Introduction to Protein Chemistry, *S.W. Fox and *J.F. Foster tell how to do it:
First, large amounts of random amounts of all 20 basic types of protein molecules would be needed. In order to succeed at this, enough of the random protein molecules would be needed to fill a volume 10512 TIMES the volume of our entire known universe! And all of that space would be packed in solid with protein molecules. In addition, all of them would have to contain only left-handed amino acids (which only could occur 50 percent of the time in synthetic laboratory production).
Then and only then could random chance produce just the right combination for ONE hemoglobin molecule, with the proper sequence of 574 left-handed amino acids!
Yet there are also thousands of other types of protein molecules in every living cell, and even if all of them could be assembled by chance,—the cell would still not be alive.
BEYOND DNA AND PROTEIN—We have focused our attention on DNA and protein sequence in this chapter. Just for a moment, let us look beyond DNA and protein to a few of the more complicated organs in the human body. As we do so, the requirements which randomness would have to hurdle become truly fabulous. Consider the human brain, with its ten billion integrated cells in the cerebral cortex. How could all that come about by chance? Ask an expert on ductless glands to explain hormone production to you. Your head will swim. Gaze into the human eye and view how it is constructed, how it works. You who would cling to evolution as a theory that is workable, give up! give up! There is no chance! Evolution is impossible!
COMPUTER SIMULATION—Prior to the late 1940s, men had to work out their various evolutionary theories with paper and pencil. But then advanced computers were invented. This changed the whole picture. By the 1970s, it had become clear that the "long ages" theories just did not work out. Computer calculations have established the fact that, regardless of how much time was allotted for the task,—evolution could not produce life forms!
Evolutionists can no longer glibly say, "Given enough time and given enough chance, living creatures could arise out of seawater and lightning, and pelicans could change themselves into elephants." (Unfortunately, evolutionists still say such things, because the ignorant public does not know the facts in this book.)
But computer scientists can now feed all the factors into a large computer—and get fairly rapid answers. Within a dramatically short time they can find out whether evolution is possible after all!
Unfortunately, the evolutionists prefer to stay away from such computer simulations; they are afraid to face the facts. Instead they spend their time discussing their dreamy ideas with one another and writing articles about their theories in scientific journals.
A computer scientist who spoke at a special biology symposium in Philadelphia in 1967, when computers were not as powerful as they are today, laid out the facts this way:
"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 to the Neo-Darwinian Interpretation of Evolution (1967), pp. 73-75 (an address given at the Wistar Institute of Anatomy and Biology Symposium).
*Schutzenberger then turned his attention to the key point that scientists admit to be the only real basis of evolution: gradual improvements in the genetic code through beneficial mutations, resulting in new and changed species:
"We believe that it is not conceivable. In fact, if we try to simulate such a situation by making changes randomly at the typographic level—by letters or by blocks, the size of the unit need not matter—on computer programs, we find that we have no chance (i.e., less than 1/101000) even to see what the modified program would compute; it just jams!
"Further, there is no chance (less than 1/101000) to see this mechanism (this single changed characteristic in the DNA) appear spontaneously and, if it did, even less [chance] for it to remain!
"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."—*Ibid.
There is a one in 1/101000 chance that just one mutation could be beneficial and improve DNA. Now 1/101000is one with a thousand zeros after it! In contrast, one chance in a million only involves six zeros! Compare it with the almost impossible likelihood of your winning a major multimillion-dollar state lottery in the United States: That figure has been computed, and is only a relatively "tiny" number of six with six zeros after it. Evolution requires probabilities which are totally out of the realm of reality.
THE DNA LANGUAGE—Another researcher, *M. Eden, in attendance at the same Wistar Institute, said that the code within the DNA molecule is actually in a structured form, like letters and words in a language. Like them, the DNA code is structured in a certain sequence, and only because of the sequence can the code have meaning.
*Eden then goes on and explains that DNA, like other languages, cannot be tinkered with by random variational changes; if that is done, the result will always be confusion!
"No currently existing formal language can tolerate random changes in the symbol sequences which express its sentences. Meaning is invariably destroyed."—*M. Eden, "Inadequacies of Neo-Darwinian Evolution as a Scientific Theory," in op. cit., p. 11.
And yet evolutionary theory teaches that DNA and all life appeared by chance, and then evolved through random changes within the DNA!
(For more information on those special evolutionary conferences, see chapter 1. History of Evolutionary Theory.)
THE MORE TIME, THE LESS SUCCESS—Evolutionists imagine that time could solve the problem: Given enough time, the impossible could become possible. But time works directly against success. Here is why:
"Time is no help. Biomolecules 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.
ALL AT ONCE—Everything had to come together all at once. Within a few minutes, all the various parts of the living organism had to make themselves out of sloshing, muddy water.
"However, conventional Darwinian theory rationalizes most adaptations by assuming that sufficient time has transpired during evolution for natural selection to provide us with all the biological adaptations we see on earth today, but in reality the adaptive process must by necessity occur rather quickly (in one or at the most two breeding generations)."—*E. Steele, Somatic Selection and Adaptive Evolution (2nd ed. 1981), p. 3.
"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.
"To form a polypeptide chain of a protein containing one hundred amino acids represents a choice of one out of 1O130 possibilities. Here again, there is no evidence suggesting that one sequence is more stable than another, energetically. The total number of hydrogen atoms in the universe is only 1078. That the probability of forming one of these polypeptide chains by chance is unimaginably small; within the boundary of conditions of time and space we are considering it is effectively zero."—*E. Ambrose, The Nature and Origin of the Biological World (1982), p. 135.
BACTERIA DISPROVE EVOLUTION—Let us go beyond DNA molecules and pieces of protein, and consider one of the simplest of life forms. Scientists have studied in detail the bacterium, Escherichia coli. These bacteria are commonly found in the large bowel.
Under favorable conditions bacterial cells can divide every 20 minutes. Then their offspring immediately begin reproducing. Theoretically, one cell can produce 1020 cells in one day! For over a century researchers have studied E-coli bacteria. All that time those bacteria have reproduced as much as people could in millions of years. Yet never has one bacterium been found to change into anything else. And those little creatures do not divide simply. The single chromosome replicates (makes a copy of itself), and then splits in two. Then each daughter cell splits in two, forming the various cells in the bacterium. These tiny bacteria can divide either sexually or asexually.
Escherichia coli has about 5000 genes in its single chromosome strand. This is the equivalent of a million three-letter codons. Yet this tiny bacterium is one of the "simplest" living creatures that exists.
Please, do not underestimate the complexity of this, a creature with only ONE chromosome: First, that one chromosome is a combination lock with a million units, arranged in a definite sequence. Second, each unit is made up of three sub-units (A-C-C, G-T-A, etc.). Third, the sub-units are combined from four different chemical building blocks: A, G, C, and T. What are the possible number of combinations for that one chromosome? Get a sheet of paper and figure that one out for yourself.
FRAME SHIFTS—Then scientists discovered an even "simpler" creature that lives in the human bowel. It is called the theta-x-174, and is a tiny virus. It is so small, that it does not contain enough DNA information to produce the proteins in its membrane! How then can it do it? How can it produce proteins without enough DNA code to produce proteins! Scientists were totally baffled upon making this discovery. Then they discovered the high-tech secret: The answer is but another example of a super-intelligent Creator. The researchers found that this tiny, mindless creature routinely codes for that protein thousands of times a day—and does it by "frame shift."
To try to describe it in simple words, a gene is read off from the first DNA base to produce a protein. Then the same message is read again—but this time omitting the first base and starting with the second. This produces a different protein. And on and on it goes. Try writing messages in this manner, and you will begin to see how utterly complicated it is: "Try writing messages / writing messages in / messages in this / in this manner." That is how the simplest of viruses uses its DNA coding to make its protein!
Does someone think that the virus was smart enough to figure out that complicated procedure with its own brains? Or will someone suggest that it all "just happened by chance?"
With all this in mind, *Wally Gilbert, a Nobel prize winning molecular biologist, said that bacteria and viruses have a more complicated DNA code-reading system than the "higher forms of life."
THE CENTRAL DOGMA—*Francis Crick, the co-discoverer of the structure of DNA, prepared a genetic principle which he entitled, "The Central Dogma":
"The transfer of information from nucleic acid to nucleic acid, or from nucleic acid to protein may be possible, but transfer from protein to protein, or from protein to nucleic acid is impossible."—*Francis Crick, "Central Dogma," quoted in *Richard Milner, Encyclopedia of Evolution (1990), p. 77.
The Central Dogma is an important scientific principle and means this: The complex coding within the DNA in the cell nucleus decides the traits for the organism. But what is in the body and what happens to the body cannot affect the DNA coding. What this means is this: Species cannot change from one into another! All the members in a species (dogs, for example) can only be the outcome of the wide range of "gene pool" data in the DNA, but no member of that species can, because of the environment or what has happened to that individual, change into another species. Only changes in the DNA coding can produce such changes; nothing else can do it.
"It [the Central Dogma] has proved a fruitful principle, ever since James Watson and Crick discovered the double-helix structure of DNA in the 1950s. DNA is the blueprint; it gives instructions to the RNA and to proteins about how to arrange themselves."—*Richard Milner, Encyclopedia of Evolution (1990), ibid.
"An honest man, armed with all the knowledge available to us now, could only state that in some sense, the origin of life appears at the moment to be almost a miracle, so many are the conditions which would have had to have been satisfied to get it going."—*Francis Crick, Life Itself (1981), p. 88.
BLUE GENE—Announcement has been made that IBM has begun work on their largest computer to-date. It is called "Blue gene"; and it must be powerful, for they have been building even larger supercomputers since the 1940s. This one will be 100 times more powerful than Big Blue, the computer used to defeat Kasperson in chess several years ago.
They are trying to figure out something which is so utterly complicated that no lesser computer can handle the task. No, not something simple like computing a trip to Saturn and back. Their objective is solving something far more complicated. —It is figuring out how a protein folds! (Also see p. 893 of this book for more information!)
In every cell in your body, brainless proteins assemble more proteins from amino acids. They put them into their proper sequence (!) and, then as soon as the task is ended, the new protein automatically folds down into a clump, as complicated as a piece of steel wool. IBM is trying to figure out the fold pattern instantly made by this microscopic piece of mindless, newborn protein!
The computer will cost $100 million, and Stanford University is trying to get people to let them use their home computers to help with the task (go to standford.edu for details). They say they need the information to figure out drugs to counteract HIV and other viruses. So far, they can only get the protein to wiggle; they cannot get it to fold (NPR, Wednesday evening, September 27, 2000).
For more on proteins and how they do their work in the cell, go to our website, evolution-facts.org and locate a special study on protein.
Enter the mad cow: The terrible plague of mad cow disease (initially brought into existence by cannibalism in New Guinea) is caused by eating dead meat containing proteins that, after death, have changed their folding pattern or when humans are injected with raw glandulars containing them. Nearly all cows are fed on feed lots, and their food contains animal protein! The same is true of swine and chicken feed. That is why food animals are subject to mad cow disease.
EVOLUTION COULD NOT DO THIS
The teeth of a rat are designed so the top two front teeth go behind the bottom two, at just the right angle to produce self-sharpening teeth. Engineers at General Electric wanted to design a self-sharpening saw blade in order to obtain exactly the right angle in relation to the metal it is cutting; so they studied the teeth of a rat. They found there was no other way it could be done as efficiently. As it slices through the metal, small pieces of the new blade are cut away by the metal, thus always keeping the blade sharp. That self-sharpening blade lasts six times longer than any other blade they had previously been able to make. All because the trained researchers studied the teeth of a rat. Who designed those teeth?
Why do you have odor-detecting cells in your nose? Why can you taste with your tongue? Why does food have built-in flavors? The food and your tongue were designed for one another! Why do you have semi-circular canals in your ears, sending signals to your brain, so you can stand without falling over?
CHAPTER 8 - STUDY AND REVIEW QUESTIONS
DNA AND PROTEIN
GRADES 5 TO 12 ON A GRADUATED SCALE
1- Prepare a diagram of a DNA molecule. Use different colors to show the different parts.
2 - Research the story of how DNA was discovered and write a report on it.
3 - Would it be easier for DNA to be made by randomness or by researchers in a laboratory? Could living DNA be made in either place?
4 - Research into what is in a blood cell, and then write about the different parts. Underline those parts which could be produced by random action (called "natural selection").
5 - There are 20 essential amino acids, 300 special-sequence amino acids in each medium-sized protein, and billions of possible sequences. What do you think would happen in your body if just one of those sequences was out of place?
6 - Can "non-random patterns" be produced randomly? Codes are made by intelligent people. Can they be produced by chance?
7 - Find out how DNA divides, and write a brief report on how it happens.
8 - Random production of amino acids always produce a 50-50 mixture of left- and right-handed forms of them. Could the randomness of evolution produce living tissue with only left-handed amino acids?
9 - Why is it that evolutionists do not give up trying to prove that impossible things can happen?
10 - There are 26 reasons why DNA cannot be originated outside of living tissue. List 10 which you consider to be the most unlikely to be accomplished synthetically.
11 - Briefly explain one of the following: translator package, messenger RNA, biological compiler, codon, nucleotide, t-DNA.
12 - Write a report on the mathematical possibilities (probabilities) that amino acids, protein, or DNA could be accidently produced by random activity in barrels of chemicals which filled all of space throughout the universe.