I was reading a book entitled, In Six Days, a series of short articles by scientists, mostly PhD, who accept the literal Biblical account of creation and origins. It's fascinating reading, but not an easy read. I read it through three times and profited just as much from the third reading as from the first.
I came away with two breathtaking (to me) arguments for the existence of an intelligent Creator which seem unanswerable:
Irreducible complexity--a single-celled organism is probably more complex that a city. It's certainly more complex than a passenger jetliner. But here's the "Boom" that struck me as I was contemplating this: It doesn't get any lower. Life doesn't get any lower than this fantastically complex cell. There's nothing below the cellular level in self-replicating life. "Primordial ooze" and "warm pond" stories all imply that there is "proto-life" below the cell level, but that just isn't true. Evolutionary theory operates on the assumption that it is the reproduction side of things that enables the selection, the rising up from simple to complex. How're you going to do that with something that doesn't reproduce, i.e., non-life? Amino acids are not living. Enzymes are not living. Sugars are not living. None of these organic compounds are living. They do not reproduce. Natural selection can't operate on them. This seems obvious, but we're bamboozled by the warm pond stories, and I think I know why. It's because we've all seen a situation where nutrient-rich water inevitably grows things. Life seems to spring out of such situations of its own accord. But that's not the case. In every case, the life we see, the mold, the yeast, the scum, the goo--they all came from elsewhere, from previous mold, yeast, scum and goo. They didn't originate in that pond (or petri dish).
And think about this: Picture a bolt lying next to a threaded hole just the right size for the bolt, with a washer of the correct size lying nearby. What are the odds that bolt could thread itself into the hole by chance, with the washer between, and torque itself down to the right spec? What I'm saying is, even if you were to gather all the components of a cell together in one place, there's Some Assembly Required. And the assembly is way more complex than just putting the bolt into the hole and torquing it down, which, by the way, is a never-happen-by-chance event (in case you haven't guessed). Multiply that by thousands of equally impossible-by-chance events, and you would arrive at an assembled cell. Congratulations! But now you've got another problem: Where are you going to get the life? You've just assembled a carcass, one which started decaying long before you finished putting it together. Remember, these compounds are subject, like everything else, to the second law of thermodynamics, and they are busily breaking down into simpler substances while you're working.
You might say, But a completed cell would automatically begin functioning--life begins! I beg to differ. All of us have seen animal carcasses which are complete but non-functioning. The life is gone from them. How did the life get there in the first place? From another animal like it. Like begets like. We know of no other way. The implications are huge.
The next point I'll cover in a future post.
