Saturday, May 28, 2011

The Chicken or the Egg

Remember the old question, "Which came first, the chicken or the egg?" Well which was it? The answer is simple if you understand that there is a Creator in the Bible who made all that there is. However, if you follow naturalistic concepts such as evolution the answer is less than clear. Let's make the question a bit more modern. Which came first, the Blu-Ray disc or the machine to read it? In this question we understand that there was a system creator and that the two were developed together. What good is making a Blu-Ray disc if you do not have a machine to read it? It would make a good skeet target, but that is about all. All of the information contained on it could not be retrieved if the machine to read it was not developed simultaneously. Problems like this are found around us every day in the entire universe and they give the overwhelming impression that there had to be a Designer of life as well as the universe.



Every cell in your body holds DNA. That DNA holds close to 750 megabytes of information or 3/4 of a gigabyte. That is a great deal of information. In his work* Signature in the Cell, Dr. Stephen C. Meyer asked to find a source of information that did not have a mind from which it originated. What if you found a book at a garage sale with the title page missing and the front cover destroyed. If you read it and liked it, would you ask how that book evolved or who wrote it? You would ask who wrote it, of course. That much information just doesn't evolve especially using a language system that is readable, detectable, and discernable, so the thought that it spontaneously generated would be an absurdity. Meyer used a similar illustration in his work noted above. If you had a set of encyclopedias wash ashore while you were at the beach, common sense tells you that it did not evolve by random processes. The encyclopedias had someone who compiled and printed the information. So why do so many ask if random processes spontaneously generated the information in the cells of every living thing while not asking who compiled and compressed the information into an ingenious language readable by components in the cell and discernable and decodable by other intelligent minds?



Let's say that you have a complete car engine but you don't have spark plugs. What good is the engine? How many necessary parts are there like this in an engine? How many parts are so integral to the engine that the car could not run without it? For that matter, let's say the engine worked fine, but you have no transmission--where will the car go? All of the systems and the parts of those systems have to be in place at the beginning or the car won't perform its designed task. Your cells and your body are even more complex than an engine, and there are many, many things that have to immediately be in place for life to happen. The organism simply could not survive without those integral components in place. This is called irreducible complexity. Biochemist Michael Behe was one of the first to make the argument that cells are too complex to just have developed on their own without an intelligent mind behind their design. There are many parts of a cell and entire organisms that must be in place at once for the organism to survive. They could not have evolved separately over time. Yet, many who claim to be brilliant are being illogical and ignoring this because they all too well understand the implications. They are turning a blind eye to the facts in order to maintain their own stubborn assertions and paradigms.


Let’s think back to the original question about the chicken or the egg and apply it to DNA. If we look at the information in DNA, the blueprints for building life, which came first, DNA or the RNA reader systems that decode it. Like the worthless Blu-Ray disc, if the system to read and interpret the information did not come about simultaneously, the information is worthless and there could be no life. How did such a complex system evolve over time? These are the sort questions that have many scientists saying that life on earth may have been seeded from space since every living cell is just too complex to happen randomly. Cells definitely have the appearance of being developed by an intelligent mind. As the quote mentioned in my prior post stated, it appears that “a super intellect has monkeyed with physics, as well as with chemistry and biology". Fred Hoyle, astronomer and mathematician, clearly could see that there seemed to be such an appearance although he was no believer in the God of the Bible as far as can be determined. The point is that one has to ignore all of these inferences of divinity and creation to conclude that there is no God.


Being an atheist, then, may actually be very illogical. Those believing in the random and spontaneous generation of life and the universe while willingly ignoring or explaining away the evidence to the contrary may be actually be professing themselves to be wise while thinking very foolishly.


Without realizing it today’s intelligent minds, such as Hawking, who says there is no God are fulfilling the prophecy of the end of days below. They are purposefully ignoring the evidence that there is a God who is creator and judge. The reasoning may be that they don’t want a God to be accountable to. Yet, they are accountable whether they state that He is there or not. We all know that ignorance of the law is no excuse in court. Ignorance of God will not hold up in His court either!


For this they willingly are ignorant of, that by the word of God the heavens were of old, and the earth standing out of the water and in the water: Whereby the world that then was, being overflowed with water, perished: But the heavens and the earth, which are now, by the same word are kept in store, reserved unto fire against the day of judgment and perdition of ungodly men. But, beloved, be not ignorant of this one thing, that one day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day.
2 Peter 3:5-7


*Meyers, Stephen C. Signature in the cell--DNA and the Evidence for Intelligent Design
New York, New York: Harper Collins Publishers, 2009

2 comments:

  1. Even the line of questioning posited by those in academia along with their atheistic cohorts who also espouse evolutionary chance theory; reveal their bias and lack of scientific acumen by asking and thinking "either-or" questioning and reasoning. By doing so they immediately and purposely eliminate the posibility of asking and thinking "which" line of questioning and reasoning. Instead of trying to complete an equatic logical answer they dream up fanciful space ship fantasies. Anything is acceptable to them except giving credit to or even acknowledging a God in heaven.

    Brilliant-minded Stephen Hawking reveals tinges of anger, resentment, and victim-hood in some of his writings. I'm sure he cannot fathom a Holy God becuase of the seemingly dual blessing and injustice that has been imparted upon him. Surely a just and Holy God would cure someone as brilliant as he, but since he hasn't there must not be a God the reasoning goes. Must be evolutionary chance.
    It would have been nice if Meyers' book was offered as an "either-or" option or "which" option for my daughter when she took Biology last semester. Certainly would make for interesting debate, but then again you can't have that in today's institutes of higher learning.

    In His Service,
    Tom

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  2. Anonymous said...My wife and I were discussing that same idea last week. It seems that Hawking may have tripped over the same deception as Charles Templeton. Why would a loving God allow pain and suffering in His universe. I could write a book here, but Brian Morely wrote a fairly good one on the topic. It is called "God in the Shadows."

    JN--I am having some problems logging in for some reason to make a comment--wierd.

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