The Day The Dinosaurs Died continued

Part III.

Now that we've looked into the semi-macro of God's creation, let's look into the micro-elements of God's creation--DNA--found in both dinosaurs and man, and the huge amounts of time "evolutionary theory" requires for life to develop.

Ben Bova in his book The Milky Way Galaxy says, "Man has always been fascinated by the mystery of the universe's creation. But how long is "always"?

Astonomers and geologists agree that the earth is at least five billion years old [based on the half-life of uranium, and the percentage of lead found in each and every sample of uranium, which is identical the world over]. Paleontologists estimate that life on this planet began two and a half billion years ago. Anthropologists believe man appeared about a million years ago.

Man's written history dates back scarcely six thousand years…"(The Milky Way Galaxy, by Ben Bova, p. 1,).

So evolutionary theory gives the dinosaur life-forms 2.5 billion years to develop. Then WHAM! The Great Dinosaur Extinction 65 million years ago. Evolutionary assumption is that it took 2.5 billion years for dinosaurs along with their intricate DNA molecules with their even more intricate codes for specific life-species to evolve. Then all of a sudden the great extinction of 65 million years ago takes place. As you've seen the evidence, nothing lived. How could anything survive not just the asteroid hits, but a half million years of big volcanic activity on top of all that? Now what is the statistical probability that this highly intricate life-coding system of cellular replication called DNA could "re-evolve" in exactly the same atomic pattern, but this time carrying the complex codes for man and all the flora and fauna conducive to mankind--and this in the geologically tiny space of time of a mere 65 million years? Dividing 65,000,000 by 2,500,000,000 equals 0.026. That means that this intricate life-coding molecule, with all its differing codes for each and every species, would have had to "re-evolve" in just 2.6 percent of the time it took to evolve in the first place. You students of the laws of probability, is that within the realm of possibility? I think the odds of hitting the power-ball lottery are far more in your favor than those odds. And it gets worse. Man and all the associated life-forms that accompany man--even giving the evolutionary paleontologists the million years they say man has been around--took not 65,000,000 years, but only 1 million years. That's 1,000,000 divided by 2.5 billion, or 0.4 percent the amount of time it took dinosaur life-forms and their complex DNA coding systems to evolve. What are your odds for evolution now??? You say the DNA isn't the same, so we wouldn't recognize it or be able to manipulate it? When Michael Creighton started to write his famous book "Jurassic Park" he first asked some expert geneticists if this whole idea of cloning dinosaurs from their DNA was plausible, possible. They said "Yes, it was." It has even been rumored that Jack Horner, the famous dinosaur hunter and paleontologist was attempting to "extract" some DNA from a T-Rex's thigh-bone. [I sincerely hope he doesn't succeed!]

Could DNA evolve? How intricate is DNA? How much life-code is written into each DNA strand? Let's see. After that we'll take a short look at some other amazing micro life-forms.

"It is humbling for me and awe-inspiring to realize that we have caught the first glimpse of our instruction book, previously known only to God." Francis Collins, director of the Human Genome Project.

What DNA Looks Like
"DNA, or deoxyribonucleic acid, is found in nearly every single one of more than 75 trillion cells that make up the human body. DNA is embedded in our skin cells and our hair roots and our saliva. It's in our blood, our sweat, and our tears. To see what this DNA looks like, we need to take a close look inside a typical human cell, which magnifies the cell millions of times.

"Within this highly magnified cell, 46 chromosomesfloat in a watery nucleus. These threadlike strands are made of protein and DNA molecules. A close look at one of these DNA molecules reveals what scientists call the double helix. This large, double-stranded molecule resembles a long, spiraling ladder. The two sides of this spiraling DNA ladder are made of four building blocks called nucleotides. Each nucleotide is made of a sugar joined to a phosphate and a base. These bases come in four varieties. Scientists have identified them by the letters A (adenine), C (cytosine), G (guanine), and T (thymine), the four letters that make up the DNA alphabet.

"These nucleotides are arranged in base pairs, with each pair making up a rung on the DNA ladder. Nucleotides pair up according to strict rules. Nucleotide A pairs only with nucleotide T, and nucleotide G pairs only with nucleotide C. The A-T and G-C base pairs, repeated in various sequences again and again, make up the 3 billion "rungs" of the DNA ladder. These base pairs are arranged in a very specific order called the DNA sequence.

What DNA Does
"Scientists have compared the DNA sequence to the letters that make up the words in a book of instructions. The experts have also compared it to the software that programs computers. What is it about DNA that makes them think this way?

It turns out that the DNA molecules in a single cell--the basic unit of living matter--carry within them all the vital information and instructions needed for growth and operation of a human being [or any other organism, of this age, or the dinosaur age--no difference]. Because of DNA, our cells divide to produce more cells. Because of DNA, our hearts beat, our lungs breathe, our ears hear, and our eyes see. Because of DNA, our bodies live, grow, and function. In this way, we can say that everyone is programmed by DNA from the moment of conception.

"The DNA sequence in each of our cells carries the hereditary information transmitted to us from our parents. The chromosomes in the nucleus, or control center, of each cell contain the information. These 46 chromosomes come in two sets, each with 23 chromosomes. One set is inherited from our father, and the other set is inherited from our mother. This information determines what we will grow up to look like. Our DNA determines the physical characteristics we all have in common, such as two eyes, two arms, and two legs.

"The DNA sequence within each of our cells also carries the operating manual that tells our bodies how to grow and function. These instructions are packaged into units called genes. Each gene consists of one small section of the DNA ladder. (A typical gene takes up about 3,000 of the 3 billion "rungs" of the DNA ladder.)

"Each gene has its own special task to perform. The gene's DNA code, which is made up of sequences of A-T and G-C nucleotide base pairs, "tells" the gene to produce one specific kind of protein. Proteins are the body's building blocks. Together, all the genes produce the thousands of different kinds of proteins that make up the cells and tissuesof the human body. All the genes in a cell--80,000 or so--make up the human genome, the coded genetic blueprint that is contained in virtually every one of the more than 75 trillion cells in the human body…" ("DNA Fingerprinting, the Ultimate Identity", by Ron Fridell, pp. 7,8,9,10,11).

"But your genome is not quite identical to anyone else's. Small but significant differences in the DNA sequence appear here and there along the DNA ladder. Here's how a geneticist, a scientist who studies genes, explains these differences to a lecture audience:

"Look at the neighbor to your left and to your right. You're 99.9 percent identical. But in a genome of 3 billion letters, even one tenth of a percent difference translates into 3 million separate spelling differences. I invite you again to look to the left and right and notice how unique you are. There is no one in this audience who has the same DNA sequence as anyone else…"("DNA Fingerprinting, The Ultimate Identity", p. 12)"

So that gives us a small glimpse of how complex not only the DNA molecule is, but how complex the DNA code or program is. The mere discovery of the complexity of DNA and this code or program within it caused one of it's discoverers to caution evolutionary biologists not to scrap the theory of evolution. But saying that all this evolved is like saying you can put all the pieces of an expensive Rolex Watch in an empty paint can with the lid securely fastened and place the can in a paint mixing vibrator, and after a million years--MAGIC--PRESTO!!! OUT COMES A PERFECT ROLEX WATCH!--absurd, impossible. And yet brilliant minds ask us to believe in the evolution of all the species we see around us, including us, and of all the species that went before us, 65 million years ago.

Let's look at some more DNA facts--to fully see the true complexity of DNA and what we really are.

"The human body has 3 trillion cells. All except red blood cells contain DNA--deoxyribonucleic acid, the chemical that stores each person's genetic code. Even after being multiplied millions of times, DNA is invisible to the naked eye. Test duplicate and isolate 13 specific sites along a DNA strand, a coiled helix that in just one cell stretches 5 feet. These sites identify an individual…" ("Biotechnology" Edited by Lynn Messina, p. 39).

"…Will it mean that our behaviors, thoughts and emotions are merely the sum of our genes, and scientists can use a genetic road map to calculate just what that sum is? Who are we then, and what will happen to our cherished senses of individuality and free will? Will knowing our genetic code mean we will know our irrevocable fates?…(ibid. p. 21)

"The Primacy of Genes also assumes that genes act on their own. How do they know when to turn on and off the synthesis of particular proteins? If you view genes as autonomous, the answer is that they just know. No one tells a gene what to do; instead, the buck starts and stops there.

"However, that view is far from accurate too. Within the staggeringly long sequences of DNA, it turns out that only a tiny percentage of letters actually form the words that constitute genes and serve as code for proteins. More than 95 percent of DNA, instead, is "non-coding." Much of DNA simply constitutes on and off switches for regulating the activity of genes. It's like you have a 100-page book, and 95 of the pages are instructions and advice for reading the other five pages. Thus, genes don't independently determine when proteins are synthesized. They follow instructions originating somewhere else.

"What regulates those switches? In some instances, chemical messengers from other parts of the cell. In other cases, messengers from other cells in the body (this is the way many hormones work)….Or a mother rat licking and grooming her infant will initiate a cascade of events that eventually turns on genes related to growth in that child. Or the smell of a female in heat will activate genes in certain male primates related to reproduction. Or a miserably stressful day of final exams will activate genes in a typical college student that will suppress the immune system, often leading to a cold or worse.

"You can't dissociate genes from the environment that turns genes on and off. And you can't dissociate the effects of genes from the environment in which proteins exert their effects. The study of genetics will never be so all encompassing as to gobble up every subject from medicine to sociology. Instead, the more science learns about genes, the more we will learn about the importance of the environment. That goes for real life, too: genes are essential but not the whole story." (Biotechnology, pp. 22, 23.)

The Bible in Proverbs 17:22 shows the interaction of attitude and health as well. And it has become a medical fact that attitude can trigger health problems or degenerative diseases. But God's Word got the medical scoop on this genetic-biologic link long before man's study of genetics and DNA. How was that possible? Proverbs 17:22, "A cheerful heart is good medicine, but a crushed spirit dries up the bones." Or as one translation has it, "…rots the bones."

HOW MANY GENES ARE THERE, ANYWAY?

"According to Collins, director of the Human Genome Project for the National Institutes of Health, the genome data collected so far haven't solved a fundamental riddle: How many genes exist, anyway? Estimates have ranged between 35,000 and 140,000 human genes. The figure is so imprecise because recent mapping of chromosome 21 found far fewer genes than expected, only 225 instead of about 500.

"In contrast, the sequences at Celera recently suggested there may be more genes than expected hidden on the chromosomes, as many as 140,000. So in jest, Collins has been presiding over a lottery that will pay off in 2003, when the genome is done…

"…This lack of firm knowledge about how many genes actually exist "is pretty striking," Waterston said. The puzzle exists because "it's not a simple thing to find genes. Only about 3 percent of the genome is used in genes that actually specify the construction of proteins. The rest includes a huge amount of DNA of unknown function that sits between genes and within genes. And there are many known genes that seem to control the activity of others" (ibid. p. 12).

"The human Genome Project is generating an amount of data unprecedented in biology. A simple list of the units of DNA, called bases, that make up the human genome would fill 200 telephone books--even without the annotations describing what those DNA sequences do. A working draft of 90 percent of the total human DNA sequence is expected by 2003. But that will be merely a skeleton that will require many layers of annotation to give it meaning…

"Proteins not only make up the structural bulk of the human body but also include the enzymes that carry out the biochemical reactions of life. They are composed of units called amino acids linked together in a long string; each string folds in a way that determines the function of a protein. The order of the amino acids is set by the DNA base sequence of the gene that encodes a given protein, through intermediaries called RNA; genes that actively make RNA are said to be "expressed." (ibid. p. 13)

"…The six billion bases of the human genome are thought to encode approximately 100,000 proteins…"(ibid. p. 14)

"Being able to model a single cell will be impressive, but to understand fully the life-forms we are most familiar with, we will plainly have to consider additional levels of complexity.

We will have to examine how genes and their products behave in place and time--that is, in different parts of the body and in a body that changes over a life span.

"So far developmental biologists have striven to find signals that are universally important in establishing an animal's body plan, the arrangement of its limbs and organs. In time, they will also describe the variations--in gene sequence and perhaps in gene regulation--that generate the striking diversity of forms among different species. By comparing species, we will learn how genetic circuits have been modified to carry out distinct programs so that almost equivalent networks of genes fashion, for example, small furry legs in mice and arms with opposable digits in humans. (ibid. p. 16)

DID WE ALL COME FROM ONE SET OF PARENTS--ADAM AND EVE??? DNA POINTS IN THAT DIRECTION.

"Despite what may seem like great diversity in our species, studies from the past decade show that the human species is more homogeneous than many others; as a group, we display less variation than chimps do. Among humans, the same genetic variations tend to be found across all population groups, and only a small fraction of the total variation (between 10 and 15 percent) can be related to differences between groups. This has led some population biologists to the conclusion that not so long ago the human species was composed of a small group, perhaps 10,000 individuals, and that human populations dispersed over the earth only recently…"
(ibid. p. 17)
DNA HAS BEEN AROUND FOR 3.5 BILLION YEARS BY SCIENTISTS OWN ADMISSION--A HIGHLY COMPLEX MOLECULAR CODE BOOK. THE K/T BARRIER SHOWS THAT ALL LIFE STOPPED 65 MILLION YEARS AGO. THEN--BAM!--AN ENTIRELY NEW GROUP OF LIFE-FORMS APEAR, MANY HIGHER SPECIES OBVIOUSLY CONTAINING THE 200+ PHONEBOOKS OF GENETIC CODE CONTAINED IN DNA.

. If DNA were around for 3.5 billion years, then how long did it take to "evolve" with all this incredibly large code-book library for life found in each species in the Age of Dinosaurs? And then the DNA code-books are destroyed 65 million years ago, for all life on the planet--and then they re-appear fairly recently, less than a million years ago, this time containing a whole new library full of 200+ phonebook size code-books of DNA for the life-forms around us today.

"To a large extent, DNA sequence data have already exposed the record of 3.5 billion years of evolution…One aspect of inheritance has complicated the hope of assigning all living things to branches in a single tree of life. In many cases, different genes suggest different family histories for the same organisms…Genes sometimes hop across large evolutionary gaps." (ibid. p. 19)

Say DNA took a billion years to evolve into the many complex dinosaur life-forms that inhabited earth from 3.5 billion years ago to 65 million years ago. And then lets go with the date that paleontologists ascribe to man's appearance on earth, 100,000 years ago (we'll give them that, even though the Bible says 6 thousand years ago). 100,000 divided by 1,000,000,000 (1 billion) (the time it took for dino-DNA to "evolve") equals 0.1 percent of the original time it took for Dinosaurian DNA to develop. That is, all the life-forms we see around us, their DNA took only 0.1 percent of the time to "re-evolve", but this time coded to all the life-forms we see around us. Now what are the statistical probabilities that something as complex as DNA, or the 200+ phonebooks of DNA code, could "re-evolve" in only 0.1 percent of the time? The re-appearance of the same DNA code-books, but now programmed to the flora and fauna of the Age of Man show the authorship and ownership of an extremely intelligent design and program engineer--God himself. "Genes sometimes hop across large evolutionary gaps…" Yes, they hopped across the K/T Barrier. How in the world did they do this? And how did they "re-evolve" in the same identical complexity as they had been before, and in only 0.1 percent of the time that they had "evolved" before. And where is the evidence of DNA evolution?

"It is humbling for me and awe-inspiring to realize that we have caught the first glimpse of our own instruction book, previously known only to God." Francis Collins, director of the Human Genome Project.

Let's take a quick tour of recent cellular discoveries in a quote from an article written by Mark Hartwig, Ph.D., in the June 2002 number of "Focus On The Family" Magazine.

Specified Complexity

"Seeing is believing--or not
For example, take the cell. In Darwin's time, scientists thought cells were just blobs of protoplasm. Now we know better.

According to cell biologist Bruce Alberts, president of the National Academy of Sciences, "The entire cell can be viewed as a factory that contains an elaborate network of interlocking assembly lines, each of which is composed of a set of large protein machines."

Alberts' description is no idle metaphor. Even the simplest cells are bristling with high-tech machinery. On the outside, their surfaces are studded with sensors, gates, pumps and identification markers. Some bacteria even sport rotary outboard motors.

Inside, cells are jam-packed with power plants, automated workshops and recycling units. Miniature monorails whisk materials from one location to another.

Such sophistication has led even hardened atheists to acknowledge the apparent design in living organisms, not that it changes their minds about evolution. Francis Crick, a Nobel laureate and co-discoverer of the structure of DNA warns, "Biologists must constantly keep in mind that what they see was not designed but rather evolved."

Proponents of intelligent design contend that living organisms appeardesigned because they are designed--they exhibit a feature that natural processes cannot mimic.

That feature is specified complexity, a concept developed by William Dembski to explain how people distinguish accidents from things that happen "on purpose."

Although the term sounds like a mouthful, the basic idea is quite simple: An object displays specified complexity when it has lots of parts (is complex) and yet fits a recognizable pattern (is specified).

For example, the article you're now reading has thousands of characters, which could have been arranged in zillions of ways. Yet it fits a recognizable pattern: It's not just a jumble of letters, but a magazine article written in English. Any rational person would conclude that it was designed.

The effectiveness of such thinking is confirmed by experience, Dembski says. "In every instance where we find specified complexity, and where [its] history is known, it turns out that design actually is present."

Now here's a really good example of the super-complexity of a single common bacteria. If it's spotted in a town's water system, you have to boil the water.

"For example, consider the little outboard motor that bacteria such as E. coli use to navigate their environment. This water-cooled contraption, called a flagellum,comes equipped with a reversible engine, drive shaft, U-joint and long whip-like propeller. It hums along at 17,000 rpm.

Its complexity is enormous. According to microbiologist Scott Minnich of the University of Idaho, you need about 50 genes to create a working flagellum. Each of those genes is as complex as a sentence with hundreds of letters. What's more, the requirements for a working flagellum are extremely tight.

"Mutations in any single gene knock out function or in lesser cases diminish function, " Minnich says. "So, to swim you have to have the full compliment of genes. There are no intermediate steps." June 2002 Focus On The Family, pp. 2, 3.)

And wherever we look in the micro-world of DNA and genes, we find the same thing. Such systems really do defy Darwinist explanations. Finally, let's see what Stephen Hawkings has to say about the second law of thermodynamics.

The Second Law of Thermodynamics

The second law of Thermodynamics points in the opposite direction of evolutionary theory as well. The second law of thermodynamics states that the decay of matter and decay of systems from a complex state of high order to a state of low or lower order is always taking place. Man and life as we know it, and the Dinosaurian life-forms as well are and were systems of high quality and high order. Evolution demands what we don't see in nature, a reversal of the Second Law of Thermodynamics. Evolutionary theory demands that we believe that the complex life-forms we see around us came, "evolved", from a much lower level of sophistication, from a state of non-life, actually. I will leave you with this final quote from Stephen Hawking:

"It is a common experience that disorder will tend to increase if things are left to themselves. (One has only to stop making repairs around the house to see that!) One can create order out of disorder (for example, one can paint the house), but that requires expenditure of effort or energy and so decreases the amount of ordered energy available. A precise statement of this idea is known as the second law of thermodynamics. It states that the entropy of an isolated system always increases, and that when two systems are jointed together, the entropy of the combined system is greater than the sum of the entropies of the individual systems ("A Brief History of Time", by Stephen Hawking, p. 130). Mr. Hawking defines "entropy" as a measure of the degree of disorder of a system. "In any closed system disorder, or entropy, always increases with time. In other words, it is a form of Murphy's law: things always tend to go wrong!…" (ibid. p. 184.) If evolutionary theory were true, a different situation would be seen by all of us in the natural world. Let Mr. Hawking explain. "Suppose, however, that God decided that the universe should finish up in a state of high order but that it didn't matter what state it started in. At early times the universe would probably be in a disordered state. This would mean that disorder would decrease with time. You would see broken cups gathering themselves together and jumping back onto the table. However, any human beings observing the cups would be living in a universe in which disorder decreased with time." (ibid. pp. 187,188) But we don't live in such a universe. In order to see order come from a state of disorder, it takes intelligent design of a design engineer, work, effort and applied energy, or what is called an application of the law of "Specified Complexity".

The Next Important Question

So now we come to the next really important question. If we are the product of intelligent design, who was the Designer? Skeptics, atheist's and scoffers alike say the Bible was the writings of early nomadic Jews, and is basically uninspired. Even religious scholars in some of the famous universities like Harvard teach courses that tend to be critical of a literal interpretation of the Bible, and show it was basically humanly inspired and can't be taken literally. But is this really true? Is the Word of God, the Holy Bible, just a product of the imaginations of some early nomadic Hebrew wanderers in the deserts of Mesopotamia and Palestine? Or is the Bible really the Word of God? Is there any way you, as an individual, can prove that the Bible is the infallible Word of God? To learn just how inspired and accurate the Bible really is and to about Jesus, who he was and who he is, log onto http://www.UNITYINCHRIST.COM/prophecies/1stcoming.htm. You may also wish to learn about how the Christian church got started, and how you can go about choosing a church. To do so, log onto http://www.UNITYINCHRIST.COM/history2/index4.htm