(‘Living, Moving, Being’ … ‘I believe in Creation because …’)
The power of God’s wisdom in creation
Allan Harrison Ascot WA
Information is power and nowhere is information more powerful that in the blueprint of life. Science
can now map all the genes in your body or any other plant and animal that you care to study. The
sheer enormity of the information that makes us conscious intelligent beings astounds us. Where
did all this information come from? It is the signature of our all-powerful, ever-present eternal God.
The information that makes us similar and yet unique is our Maker’s imprint. It says, “I am the
LORD; and there is none else”. As Christ’s disciples we believe that “the LORD … created the
heavens; God Himself that formed the earth and made it; He hath established it, he created it not
in vain, He formed it to be inhabited” (Isaiah 45:18). As we wait for Jesus Christ, we thank God for
His wonderful gift of information in the Bible and His creation.
Genesis 1-2 summarizes Almighty God’s handiwork and Psalm 33:6-9 agrees: “By the word of the
LORD were the heavens made … he spake and it was done; he commanded and it stood fast”.
Jesus points to “the lilies of the field” which he said that his Father made; see “how they grow; they
toil not, neither do they spin … Wherefore, if God so clothe the grass of the field” (Matthew
6:28,30) will He not care for us? The Father of life and light certainly cares for us and in Psalm 104
He shows us His glory in the things He has made for His and our pleasure. “O LORD, how manifold
are thy works! in wisdom hast thou made them all: the earth is full of thy riches” (verse 24).
Paul highlights the purpose and spiritual import of creation in Acts 17:24-30 and Romans 1:19-25.
First, he told the Athenians that God “made of one blood (NASB ‘one man’) all nations of men for to
dwell on the face of the earth, and hath determined the times before appointed, and the bounds of
their habitation” (verse 26). Thus we are subject to God’s will not Him to us! In Romans 1, “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”. Deniers of His creative genius are
“without excuse” (verse 20) and, “as we are the offspring of God, we ought not to think that the
Godhead is like unto gold, or silver, or stone, graven by art and man’s device” (Acts 17:29).
Evolution is one such human device that replaces divine power and intelligence with blind chance.
Because we have been shown Father’s purpose and power, He holds us responsible for how we
think about Him and His creation. To those who protest that creating the world and life on it was
too much work for six days, remember what Paul said to Agrippa, “Why should it be thought a thing
incredible with you, that God should raise the dead” (Acts 26:8). If God can resurrect a man and
restore his memories in a moment, why should it be thought incredible that God created all the
plants and animals in six days? If Christ could summon “12 legions of angels”; all these angels
armed with God’s infinite power and wisdom, make creation a credible belief.
The importance of faith
“Through faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God, so that things which
are seen were not made of things which do appear” (Hebrews.11:3) (“worlds” here is aions
showing that our God controls time as well as matter.). The saints named in this chapter pleased
God because they believed everything that He said. The same belief sustained thousands of our
brothers and sisters through the ages; so why would we now abandon faith in the Bible’s account
of creation and accept evolution?
We will now focus on the biggest problem for evolution: the information that made life possible.
Before the scientific age, life was viewed as a ‘divine spark’. Life, souls and spirits were
phantasmas that belonged in the church rather than rational science, and religious leaders kept it
that way. Knowledge advanced slowly over the millenia as science facts grew in a haphazard way.
Evidence-based science arrived with Galileo and Newtoni and gradually replaced the ideas of
Aristotle, Ptolomy and Democritus. We propose that Darwinian evolution, despite its popularity,
lacks the analytical support enjoyed by the theories of true science.
The history of biological thinking
The vitalist approach to life and living things held sway for 2000 years until the evidence-based
methods of Versalius (c.1628), Redi (c.1668), Spallanzani (c.1768) and Pasteur (c.1880) defeated
the idea of the spontaneous generation of life. By the mid-19thC, reproduction after their kind
replaced the view that fallen leaves became fish, maggots arose from rotting meat or mud turned
into frogs. It took mankind almost 6000 years to validate what the Bible said in its first chapter. This
issue alone tells us that Genesis 1 is a credible account: “herb … and tree yielding fruit after his
kind” (verses 11-12) and the same for “every living creature” (verses 21-25). 10 times Genesis 1
tells us that all living reproduced “after their kind”.
Gregor Mendel advanced our knowledge of reproduction by showing that every living thing is
governed by inherited factors that pass from generation to generation. The factors are now called
genes. At about the same time, the cell theory ii(c.1839) established the cell as the fundamental
unit of life. For Darwin, cells were minute sacs of gel-like protoplasm. His conception was shortlived as the next 100 years unveiled cell structure in so much detail that multiple disciplines like
genomics, molecular biology, virology, etc., are needed to study cell behaviour. Cells are probed,
altered and explained in terms of atoms, molecules and energy. Vitalism and the ‘divine spark’ has
been replaced by chemistry and the vast set of information coded into each cell’s deoxyribonucleic
acid or DNA.
Fifty years after Watson and Crick unlocked the structure of DNA, machines read and record the
DNA code of any and every living thing. Reading the code was expected to seal the creationevolution debate in favour of evolution. Instead, it resurrected the biggest question for evolution:
from where did this information come? We believe that it came from the mind of God not evolution.
Life is information
The scientific understanding of life does not exclude God, it exalts Him. The genetic code reveals
an unimagined wealth of information. It controls every structure and function in every living thing
and enables plants and animals to reproduce “after their kind”. Almost every cell in your body has
a complete set of DNA, so complete that it is able to make a replica of you. Remember Dolly the
sheep? Farm animals are regularly cloned from a single nucleus. The nucleus of a human cell has
at least 30 000 genes tucked in a tiny sphere 0.005mm in diameter. This information enables a
conscious person to walk, talk and think; solve problems, write stories, treat diseases; feel joy,
sadness, love and thank God. Truly we are “fearfully and wonderfully made” (Psalm 139:14).
Information is critical
The primary function of the DNA code is to make protein molecules. Proteins are the key to life.
The common gut bacterium called Escherichia coli makes more than 500 different proteins and
mammals make over 100 000 different proteins. Proteins are made up of 20 different amino acids.
The number and order of the amino acids in a protein is all coded in the DNA. To give you an idea
of size, amino acids are made of about 20 atoms. Some proteins contain over 100 000 amino
acids and are big enough to be seen with electron microscopes.
The next bit of information may be technical but it leads to a very important idea. DNA is a double
helix that looks like a twisted ladder (Figure 1). The name and the order of amino acids is coded in
the DNA as three-letter words using an alphabet of just four letters: A, T, C, Giii. The rungs in the
ladder can only be A—T, T—A, C—G or G—C. In Figure 1, the code reads AAT CGA which could
code for two amino acids AAT (is asparagine) and CGA (is arginine).
Many cell proteins fit in the range of 100 to 1000 amino acids. Take, for example, a protein made
up of 200 amino acids; it needs 600 pairs of A—T, T—A, C—G and G—C in the cell’s DNA. The
very simplest bacterium is called Carsonella rudii and is a parasite in an insect’s cells. It is too
small and does not have enough DNA to live independently yet it still has 182 genes that could
code up to 182 proteins. The simplest free-living bacterium (not a parasite) is Pelagibacter ubique
and is found in the oceans. It has 1389 genes (or 1308759 pairs of A, T, C and G). Did you take
note of that? Over 1.3 million ‘letters’ in its genetic code! And this is the simplest living thing that
can look after itself.
Insert Figure 1 about here
Evolution wants us to believe that this code arose by chance at exactly the same time as the
1000+ proteins plus all the sugars, starches, fats and minerals that such a cell contains. Evolution
believes that all these molecules randomly fell into place! It just happened. Even if you could find a
free-living cell with only a tenth or a hundredth this size, the chance of exactly the right proteins,
sugars, starches, fats and minerals plus an information molecule like DNA popping up by chance is
hopelessly low. The critical point is that the information molecule had to arise simultaneously with
all the cell’s molecules or it could not reproduce. Correlating a very large information molecule with
the cell’s other molecules sounds like an intelligent act. Life is God’s intelligence in action.
How complex is the simplest cell?
Evolution assumes that life arose spontaneously on Earth or beyond, but there is a huge gap
between a random collection of simple molecules and the proteins, carbohydrates, fats and the
information that makes up DNA. The time needed for such an improbable event to take place
cannot be calculated.
The miracle of this information self-assembling at precisely the same time as the first living thing
also self-assembled is a far better fit with an intelligent God than evolution can offer. And did we
mention that no mistakes in the information molecule and no toxic or unnecessary cell parts are
allowed? A wise intelligent creator is the better answer to the origin of life.
What evolutionists say about the origin of life
When asked to nominate the biggest questions facing evolution, three of 10 leading biologists
nominated the origin of life.
1. “The biggest gap in evolutionary theory remains the origin of life itself. We now know that life
began, probably near volcanically active zones about 3.8-3.5 billion years ago … In the laboratory
it has been possible to replicate such conditions and produce amino acids, primitive membranelike structures and some of the building blocks of DNA and RNA.… But the gap between such a
collection of molecules and even the most primitive cell remains enormous.” Chris Wills, UCSD
2. Richard Dawkins admitted that the task is gargantuan. “Was the origin of life itself a probable
event, and is life common in the universe?” Dawkins’ elsewhere explained that life may have bend
seeded on earth by intelligent aliens!
3. “The most profound unsolved problem in biology is the origin of life itself. We know a great deal
about the creative chemistry of the early Earth, but not yet enough to solve this problem.” Kenneth
Miller, Brown University.
Whence came DNA?
Was DNA a chance product of the chemical soup that evolutionists believe was the source of life?
An accidental DNA event was highly improbable on two counts: (1) As the largest molecule in the
living world, DNA is the least likely molecule to arise by chance. (2) The DNA code must be an
exact match for the amino acids in the proteins that independently arose at the same time. Two
simultaneous improbable events do not look like chance; it looks remarkably like design. The DNA
molecule that could code the amino acid sequence for a medium sized protein comprising 100
amino acids requires 600 A, T, C or G molecules plus 600 phosphate molecules plus 600 sugar
molecules; a total of 1800 molecules to code 100 amino acids. Even allowing the first informationrich molecule was RNA (single strand versus DNA’s double helix) 900 molecules are required to
make the RNA molecule that encodes 100 amino acids. We ask evolutionists, ‘do you really
believe that this monster molecule containing the exact code for the protein just happened?’
Claiming that the RNA or DNA arose in later generations will not work. An information molecule
was essential for the reproduction of the very first living thing, “after his kind”.
Every protein in every living thing has its amino acids coded as DNA or RNA. DNA and RNA are
essential for protein synthesis and proteins (as enzymes) are essential for DNA synthesis. You
cannot have one without the other. This suggests that every plant, animal and micro-organism had
a common origin. The candidates for the origin of life are Almighty God or evolution’s blind chance.
Information is the single most important ingredient for life; therefore; Almighty God, who has
revealed His wisdom and knowledge in the Bible is the only intelligent choice.
“Thou art worthy, O Lord, to receive glory and honour and power: for thou hast created all things,
and for thy pleasure they are and were created” (Revelation 11:4).
i
Aided by Harvey, Dalton, Koch, Boyle, Lavoisier, Faraday and Einstein to mention a few.
Schwann, Schleiden and Virchow in the mid 19thC.
iii A is adenine, T is thymine, C is cytosine and G is guanine
ii
Figure 1: A simple model of DNA showing the code for two amino acids