Mankind's understanding of the natural world has exploded since the first half of the 19th century. Since then, more data has flooded in from both cosmic realms and the nanoscopic realms. As our data and theories of the world expand, the trend is moving conspicuously away from creationism. The gaps in our knowledge, where the creative acts of a supernatural god could be inserted, grow ever smaller and ever more sparse.
Join me on a six-part series as we travel along and discuss the evidence that is most disastrous for creationist accounts of nature's origins.
Part 5 covers the topic of DNA.
With the exception of some lifeless viruses, every form of live on earth contains DNA. If we focus our attention on multicellular organisms alone, we can state the fact with impunity. All multicellular life on earth contains DNA.
In an embarrassing historical anecdote, it was not until the 1930s, that a scientist (indeed a physicist) named Erwin Schroedinger first asserted that the traits of organisms must be contained within their bodies in a molecular substance. The exact phrase used by Schroedinger was an "aperiodic crystalline molecule". Some nine years later, the DNA molecule was discovered by Watson and Crick, and the physicist's prediction was spot-on. The story is embarrassing because of the date. We are basically half way into the 20th century. This is truly a testament to human ignorance. DNA is at the very core of life on earth, and is the central object in biology now, in every branch. Because of extreme advances in our understanding of it in the last 20 years, DNA has broken off from "biology proper" and now commands its own field of study called genetics.
Floating amongst the creationist literature out there (it is "out there" because it is never connected to any institution of academics) is this pervasive idea that DNA is too complex to have evolved. And some combative creationists hold DNA up as a token of evidence for a "Designer". Designer is a recent buzzword they have latched on to. The rest of this article can be considered a direct response to the "Designer" proposal. But the reader can interpret my intentions in any manner appropriate.
DNA is obviously very important to life on earth. So a viable question is to ask, where is most of the DNA on the surface of the earth located?. The reader can pause for now and guess for herself where most of the DNA is located on earth.
Keep that guess in your mind.
.
.
Now for the definitive answer. Most of the DNA on earth is floating around in the oceans. Indeed, I will say that it is rather, sloshing around with the ocean water, and my choice of the verb, slosh, will become clear soon. Most DNA on earth can be found in these nano-sized containers in the oceans called Marine Bacteriophages.
Marine Bacteriophages are not alive. They are viruses. They have no motive parts, such as flagella. They have no brains, and no nucleus. They are literally a bag connected to a tube with a needle on the end of the tube. Many variations of them have "legs" at the end of the tube that act as mechanical triggers for the needle. They should not be confused with real legs. The life cycle of a bacteriophage is altogether simple. They slosh around in the water until the end of their tube chemically attaches to the membrane on the outside of a bacterium (a bacterium that is truly alive with inner organelles and a metabolism). They break the membrane with the needle and their DNA from the "bag" is squirted inside the bacterium. They do not seek-and-destroy. Don't extend them that much credit . They ram into the membranes of bacteria by sheer accident.
After their DNA has infiltrated the insides of a bacterium, the chemical machinery inside there grabs it, and blindly, mechanistically, begins to start making copies of the bacteriophage. The bacterium fills up with copies of the little virus until it bursts open, releasing and army of them back into the environment. That is the life cycle of the marine bacteriophage.
A bag of DNA with a tube on the end of it, sloshing around in the water. That is the location of the majority of DNA on planet earth. Does the reader suppose something like that could not have evolved? Apparently the biosphere on the earth is perfectly happy keeping these lifeless machines going, who do nothing more than hijack the molecular machinery of bacteria to copy themselves. If something as ridiculous as a bacteriophage gets by on the biosphere with such resounding success, why should we pause when considering very early forms of DNA containers, or simple containers which carry genetic material to be copied? Why give pause? I see no rational reason to pause. There is nothing about a bacteriophage that suggests Irreducible Complexity, or the like. We have the strongest example that the earth can support simplistic machines carrying around genetic material.
Some of the verbiage above has been carefully selected. "Blind" , "mechanistic" "molecular machinery" and the like, invoke imagery which will be very much expanded upon in part 6 of our article series. {see part 6, hybrids}.
You will have noticed that the bacteria has no cross-checks to "make sure" that the DNA it is reading should make a copy of itself and not an invading virus. The molecular machinery within the bacterium is perfectly happy grabbing and transcribing any random DNA strand, be it from itself, or from a deadly invader. This property of DNA, where its exchangeableness border on the extreme is another topic the reader should be aware of, as it will be expanded upon later.
The human body and its cells are not qualitatively different, and viruses make us ill by using an identical life cycle as the bacteriophages. The most extreme example is the ebola virus. Ebola is a viral infection that is lethal to humans regardless of sex, age or constitution. In other words, it can kill a grown man in his prime. Being so deadly, one would assume it must be a very complex little machine. The opposite is true. Ebola is a shockingly simple single-stranded RNA virus. It is little more than a long tube with RNA inside of it. The lethality of Ebola comes from a coating of molecular hairs that evenly cover its outside layer. The molecules there are identical to the ones that are coating the outside of human immune cells. If you have been carefully reading this article, you can imagine what happens next.
The Ebola virus comes into contact with the human immune system and the white blood cell "tastes" the outside of the virion. It tastes the molecular hairs, which are identical to regular human cells, and concludes that the thing is good-for-go. The immune system leaves the virion alone to go about its business of invading and copying itself and creating all sorts of mischief in the human body. Yes. The chemical machinery of the human immune system cannot differentiate friend from foe, because the (mechanical) mechanism of doing that is tasting the outside layer. Ebola's lethality is not the result of it being a big complex, aggressive virus, but by virtue that human white blood cells are so easily fooled.
In conclusion, DNA is ubiquitous in life on earth. DNA is the sole carrier of an organism's traits. Most if it is found in simplistic viruses in the oceans. The actions of DNA and viruses are mechanistic, blind, chemical reactions. And with that said, we can elegantly segue into the next article of the series.
