DNA EVIDENCE FOR GOD: Resources for Study

Einstein said, “God does not play dice.” He was right. God plays Scrabble. 

~ Philip Gold

 [Quoted in 20 Compelling Evidences That God Exists: Discover Why Believing in God Makes So Much Sense: Boa, Ken; Bowman, Jr., Robert M. (Kindle Locations 1012-1015). David C. Cook. Kindle Edition.]

N.A.S.A.’ s search for extra-terrestrial intelligence (S.E.T.I.) presupposed that information embedded in electromagnetic signals from space would indicate an intelligent source. As yet, however, radio-astronomers have not found information-bearing signals coming from space. But closer to home, molecular biologists have identified encoded information in the cell.
~ Stephen Meyer

 [Quoted in 20 Compelling Evidences That God Exists: Discover Why Believing in God Makes So Much Sense: Boa, Ken; Bowman, Jr., Robert M. (Kindle Locations 1124-1126). David C. Cook. Kindle Edition.]

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Did you know that the smallest genome known comes from a bacterium that lives off sap-feeding insects? Its genome consists of 159,662 DNA base pairs. (1) This is equal to a paperback book of about 89 to 106 pages. (2) That's much smaller than most living organisms, but it is still a lot of very precise technical information. 

Do you think you 89 pages is enough space to pack all the instructions for building a robot that finds its own fuel and then reproduces itself? One thing is for sure: if you found such a book, you would be sure that it was produced by a highly intelligent mind and not random ink blots on a page.

(1) from an online article in Nature: International Weekly Journal of Science (October 12, 2006).
(2) Based on a figure of 1500 to 1800 characters per page, which seems to be the best answer on quora.

RESOURCES FOR DIGGING DEEPER:
My class: "Life Isn't Simple"
*MP3 Audio (45 minutes)
*PowerPoint Slideshow: When you click on this link, you will note the option at the top to "Open with Google Slides" or you may open with MS PowerPoint or OpenOffice Impress (which is free).
*Class Handout
*I recommend opening the audio and using the PowerPoint Slideshow as you listen (and/or the handout).

RESOURCE LINKS FOR WEEK 3:
*Cooper, Brad. "ORIGIN OF LIFE: Resources for Study"
*The entire 16-week course may be found here: "HOW TO HAVE CONFIDENCE IN CHRIST THAT CHANGES THE WORLD (Apologetics 101: A Cumulative Case)"


INTRODUCTORY
Videos
*Discovery Science. "DNA Is Code: Who Coded It? (Science Uprising 03)." (6 1/2 minutes)
*Wallace, J. Warner. "How the Origin of Life Points to the Existence of God." (14 1/2 minutes)
*Turek, Frank. "DNA, Information, and the God of the Gaps Argument." (1 1/2 minutes)

Articles
*Arrington, Barry. "Dawkins: DNA Is Encoded Digital Information in the 'Strong Sense'"
*Wallace, J. Warner. "Why the Information in Our DNA Points to the Existence of God."
*Rana, Fazale. "Harvard Scientists Write the Book on Intelligent Design—in DNA."


INTERMEDIATE
Videos
*Meyer, Stephen & Douglas Axe. "Information Enigma" (21 minutes)
*Meyer, Stephen. "Centre for Intelligent Design Lecture 2011 by Stephen Meyer on 'Signature in the Cell'." (1 hour 22 minutes)
*Gitt, Werner. "Information from an Explosion?" (54 minutes)
*Sanford, John. "Genetic Entropy & The Mystery of the Genome" (20 minutes)

Articles
*The Christian Scientific Society. "Refereed scientific article on DNA argues for irreducible complexity."

Books
*Meyer, Stephen C. Signature in the Cell.
*Gitt, Werner R. In The Beginning Was Information. Find it cheap used at the title link or read it for FREE! online here.
*Johnson, Donald E. Programming of Life.

FINE-TUNING OF THE UNIVERSE: Resources for Study

The heavens declare the glory of God;

the skies proclaim the work of his hands.

Day after day they pour forth speech;

night after night they reveal knowledge.

They have no speech, they use no words;

no sound is heard from them.

Yet their voice goes out into all the earth,

their words to the ends of the world.

~ Psalm 19:1-4, a psalm of David, c. 1000 B.C

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The Fine-Tuning Argument is a very complex idea with multiple levels--having to do with the mathematical elegance of physical laws and the precise values in the coordination of those laws, the properties and distribution of such things as carbon and water, different necessary planetary conditions, the structure of galaxies, etc. It's a very complex issue that is really beyond my level of expertise frankly. But below you will find plenty of resources from people who are experts.

At any rate, the heart of it is very basic: If all of these hundreds of factors were not precisely as they are, human life would not be possible.

When scientists began to notice this in the 1970s, they came up with the term the "anthropic principle" ("anthropic" coming from the Greek word for human, just like our word anthropology, meaning the study of humans).

As the observations supporting the anthropic principle continued to grow, certain scientists began to speculate about and push the idea of a multiverse because they did not want to accept the fact the evidence of fine-tuning clearly points to a Fine-Tuner, a Designer, the Creator of heaven and earth.

It's an evasive move to avoid the obvious conclusion that all of this evidence points to: that the universe is clearly designed; but it doesn't work: not only is there no evidence of a multiverse, but a multiverse would simply add another layer of fine-tuning.

I invite you to get a glimpse of the amazing array of evidence for yourself by looking at some of the resources below.

RESOURCES
My Class: "Why Is There Stuff?"
*This is Week 3 in my series "How to Have Confidence in Christ That Changes the World (Apologetics 101: A Cumulative Case)" which I began September 8, 2019.
*MP3 Audio (45 minutes)
*PowerPoint Slideshow: When you click on this link, you will note the option at the top to "Open with Google Slides" or you may open with MS PowerPoint or OpenOffice Impress (which is free).
*Class Handout
*I recommend opening the audio and using the PowerPoint Slideshow as you listen and/or the handout.

SUPPLEMENTAL LINKS RELATED TO THE CLASS:
*Cooper, Brad. "Understanding The Nature of a Cumulative Case"
**Cooper, Brad. "The Universal Innate Knowledge of God: Resources for Study." See this article for resources related to the fact that we are born with an intuition for detecting design and recognizing that God is behind that design.

*The entire 16-week course may be found here: "HOW TO HAVE CONFIDENCE IN CHRIST THAT CHANGES THE WORLD (Apologetics 101: A Cumulative Case)"

INTRODUCTORY
Videos
*Brierly, Justin. "How a Dice Can Show That God Exists" (4 1/2 minutes)
*Craig, William Lane. "The Fine Tuning of the Universe" (6 1/2 minutes)
*Stephen Meyer Shatters The Myth Of The Muliverse (Science Uprising EP4) by Center for Science and Culture (8 minutes)
*Questions from Atheists. "How likely are life sustaining planets in our galaxy?" (4 1/2 minutes).
*The Privileged Planet by Illustra Media (92 minutes)


Articles
*Cooper, Brad. "A Possible Multiverse Defeater"
"ID's Top Six - The Fine-Tuning of the Universe" at Evolution News & Science Today
*"Physics Professor Tells Students Scientific Evidence Points to a 'Designer'"
*For a list of quotes on fine-tuning by important scientists, go here.


INTERMEDIATE
Videos
*Ankerberg, John. "God's Fine-Tuning of the Universe." An episode of the John Ankerberg Show (28 1/2 minutes)
*Collins, Robin. "Is [It] True? Fine-Tuning the Universe - Robin Collins at Pepperdine" (70 minutes) A Veritas Forum lecture.
*Denton, Michael. "Privileged Species." (33 minutes) An excellent video produced by the Discovery Institute and featuring Dr. Michael Denton.
*Hawthorne, John. "Reflections on Fine Tuning." (48 minutes). From a conference at The Royal Institute of Philosophy in London.
*Hainline, Allen. "The Cosmic Fine-Tuning Argument: A Conversation with Allen Hainline": An Apologetics Academy webinar hosted by Jonathan McLatchie (2 hours 35 minutes).

Audio
*Wintery Knight. "Cosmologist Luke Barnes Answers 11 Objections to the Fine-Tuning Argument." The article includes a brief intro to the audio. Scroll down to find the link for the "Download" of the podcast. (1 hour 16 minutes)

Articles (& Book Chapters)
**Craig, William Lane. On Guard (available in Kindle, Audible, audio CD & paperback). Chapters 3 & 4. Also available on Overdrive.
*Geisler, Norm and Frank Turek. I Don't Have Enough Faith to Be An Atheist, Chapter 4: "Divine Design" (p.95-112).
*Last Seminary hosts 37 articles related to this topic that can be download for FREE--with brief abstracts for each.

BOOKS
*Lewis, Geraint F. and Luke A. Barnes. A Fortunate Universe: Life in a Finely Tuned Cosmos (available in Kindle, Audible, and hardcover). Luke Barnes' introductory video about the book (11 1/2 minutes).
*Ross, Hugh. The Creator and the Cosmos (available in Kindle & paperback). (2018)
*Ross, Hugh. Improbable Planet (available in Kindle, Audible, hardcover & paperback). RTB has an introductory video for the book.
*Gonzalez, Gullermo and Jay Richards. The Privileged Planet (available in Kindle, Audible and hardcover).


ADVANCED

Articles
*Craig, William Lane. "The Teleological Argument and the Anthropic Principle."
*"Robin Collins' Fine-Tuning Website"
*Miller, Calum. "Full Defence of the Fine Tuning Argument."

**STILL LOOKING?....

Check out this excellent article and resource list by my friend Carson Weitnauer. It has helpful explanations and topically arranged links to lots of free resources.

A Hubble/NASA image of Starburst Galaxy Messier 94 (Source)

DEVOLUTION: THE PROBLEM OF ATTRITION IN BUILDING A WORKING GENOME

Those who deny God's existence seek to account for the existence of life on this planet by saying that a living cell somehow arose spontaneously and then evolved continuously until we now have a vast array of incredibly well designed organisms. Here is just one of many problems in that scenario:

(1) J.B.S. Haldane has shown that it takes 300 generations for a single mutation to be fixed within a species population.

(2) This assumes that a beneficial mutation could take place that actually adds information to a given genome (which has not been shown). But for the sake of argument, we will grant that such beneficial mutations that add information to the genome actually exist and we simply have not yet been successful in isolating these instances.

(3) The difference between one genus and another is a matter of much more than a single mutation. The genetic difference between chimps and humans, for example, is no less than 40 million mutations (a very conservative estimate that does not include the so-called "junk DNA"--that which does not code for proteins, but which we are now discovering does indeed have essential functions).

(4) At the very least, this would require a fixing of 20 million mutations (40 million divided by 2). Again, this is a very conservative estimate that assumes that evolution can take a linear path from one to the other, fixing only the needed mutations and no others (a rather unlikely scenario, but for the sake of argument, we will allow it).

(5) Assuming a period of 20 years per generation, this means it would take 120,000,000,000 years for a common ancestor of chimps to evolve into a human. Yeah, that's 120 billion years! (20 years/generation x 300 generations/mutation x 20,000,000 mutations). So even given these very conservative numbers and rather unrealistic assumptions (#2, 3 & 4), such evolution would take more than 30 times longer than the ~3.8 billion years since evolutionists claim that the first living cells appeared on earth (the problems with which I do not have time to go into today). Are you starting to see the problem? But wait! There's more.

(6) During this whole period of time in which we are hoping to fix these 20 million+ mutations in order to bring about the imagined macroevolution from hominid ancestor to modern humans....our genomes have been acquiring deleterious mutations at a rate in excess of 600 per progeny per generation. Over the course of the 6 billion generations that it would take to fix these 20 million mutations, the genome will acquire 3.6 trillion deleterious mutations (if only figuring for the input of one individual per generation). The human genome, for instance, only has a little more than 3 billion potential mutation sites. In other words, the genome that needs to evolve from hominid ancestor to human would have been completely eroded ~1,200 times during the period in which the 20 million+ mutations need to be fixed. That's a pretty serious attrition rate. Yet evolution must somehow overcome all of these impossible obstacles millions of times to bring about the vast number of living organisms. And when it gets down to the nitty gritty of organic chemistry (where such evolution must take place), no one has a clue how it could have happened. Perhaps you believe it can somehow be done. If so, you have more faith than I do.

(7) Still not seeing a problem? This "low rate" of deleterious mutations is due to the incredibly robust duplication system built into our cells that incorporates several proofreading mechanisms. In other words, imagine how much higher the attrition rate would have to be before the imagined evolutionary process got around to building these sophisticated error-correcting features into our replication system....

NOTES
*You can find an excellent discussion of most of this by one of the world's leading geneticists, Dr. John Sanford, in his book Genetic Entropy & The Mystery of the Genome (2005), see especially p.123ff, 149, 159f. (The heart of this argument comes from his book. Some of the observations are mine.) A 2-part video presentation in which Dr. Sanford presents this information.

**It should be noted that Dr. Sanford discusses other factors in his Genetic Entropy book that increase this problem exponentially (p.123ff).

(1) An excellent article that provides a much more serious discussion of the general argument that I have presented here (and discusses not only how Haldane arrived at this conclusion but also more recent studies concerning the same issue), can be found online: Online Article.
(2) No known mutations add information: Besides Sanford's book, also see:  Dr. Lee Spetner's book "Not By Chance" (1996).
(4) The figure of 40 million is based on a 2002 study by Britten which establishes a 5% genetic difference between chimps and humans. Some evolutionists have argued for as little as 1% difference, but the actual difference may be as high as 30% (see the book by Dr. Jeff Tomkins). For an excellent discussion of this issue see the online article by Dr. Jay Wile: online article here. I think it likely that the actual genetic difference is somewhere in the middle; but even if we allow for only a 1% difference, it will still take 24 billion years to fix the needed mutations. So it will still take 4000 times longer for this imagined evolution to take place than the 6 million years allowed by the hypothetical evolutionary timeline. And during that 24 billion year time span, the genome would be eroded 240 times by the accumulation of deleterious mutations.
(3) No junk DNA: Dr. Jonathan Well's book, The Myth of Junk DNA ....also: Online article.
(5) Note: I have edited this figure since original publication, since in my haste I had misplaced a decimal point.
(6) Scientists have no idea how organic chemistry could possibly lead to evolution: Online article.
(7) Proofreading mechanisms: Online article.



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QUOTES FROM EVOLUTIONISTS:

“Evolution is a fairy tale for adults,” ~ evolutionist, Dr. Paul LeMoine

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“The evolution theory is purely the product of the imagination.” ~ Dr. Ambrose Flemming, served as President of the Philosophical Society of Great Britain

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“Evolution is promoted by its practitioners as more than mere science.  Evolution is promulgated as an ideology, a secular religion -- a full-fledged alternative to Christianity, with meaning and morality.  I am an ardent evolutionist and an ex-Christian, but I must admit that in this one complaint -- ...and Mr. Gish is but one of many to make it - the literalists are absolutely right.  Evolution is a religion.  This was true of evolution in the beginning, and it is true of evolution today.” ~ Dr. Michael Ruse, professor of philosophy and zoology at the University of Guelph

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"It is easy enough to make up stories of how one form gave rise to another, and to find reasons why the stages should be favoured by natural selection.  But such stories are not part of science, for there is no way of putting them to the test." ~Patterson*, Colin, Personal Letter to Luther D. Sunderland, April 10, 1979.
*Dr. Patterson was the Senior Paleontologist at the British Museum of Natural History in London

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"My attempts to demonstrate evolution by an experiment carried on for more than 40 years have completely failed.....It is not even possible to make a caricature of an evolution out of paleobiological facts...The idea of an evolution rests on pure belief." ~Dr. Nils Heribert-Nilsson, noted Swedish botanist and geneticist, of Lund University

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“One morning I woke up and . . . it struck me that I had been working on this stuff for twenty years and there was not one thing I knew about it. That’s quite a shock to learn that one can be misled so long . . . I’ve tried putting a simple question to various people: ‘Can you tell me anything you know about evolution, any one thing, any one thing that is true?’ I tried that question on the geology staff at the Field Museum of Natural History and the only answer I got was silence. I tried it on the members of the Evolutionary Morphology Seminar in the University of Chicago, a very prestigious body of evolutionists, and all I got there was silence for a long time and eventually one person said, ‘I do know one thing—it ought not to be taught in high school.’” ~Dr. Colin Patterson, senior paleontologist, British Museum of Natural History, in a keynote address at the American Museum of Natural History, New York City, in 1981


SEE ALSO....
*"A Billion Genes and Not One Beneficial Mutation" at Evolution News & Views

*"A mathematical model for the waiting time of coordinated mutations to appear" by Prof. Dr. Ola Hössjer